Requiem
by Darktayle
Summary: What would happen if Kakashi were killed early in the Wave saga? This is a story of Team 7's struggle to survive, and the boy who must grow strong to save them. Team 7-centric.
1. The Weight of a Second

This idea just freakishly took a hold on my brain, like all my other ones do. This story will feature a character death in the first chapter, Naruto becoming much more serious, and cooperating with the Kyuubi. It will feature a _kickass_ Naruto. If you feel he is becoming too powerful, please explain why and I'll think about it. If I feel you're wrong, I'll explain why. If I think you're right, I'll do my best to correct it. As it is, this story will feature such a dramatic and sudden change of attitude in Naruto that it will be extremely difficult to keep it realistic, so please bear with me. I have a writing style, but by no means is it perfected.

I want to get this clear: I do not use spell check. I do not get a beta. I have no desire to get a beta. I _will_ have some typos in here, because sometimes when I get into the typing my fingers get ahead of themselves. If you can identify it as a typo, please don't comment on it. If it's a spelling mistake that is either obvious or repeated, tell me and I'll commit it to memory. I always do that. As for another thing, I'm English, so I spell some words differently to how Americans would. For instance: gray-grey, mom-mum, color-colour. There are some words which are completely different, like what an American knows as a purse is caleld a handbag in England. For us, a purse means a wallet. Like something you keep your money in. For us, the work 'biscuit' applies to all of what Americans call 'cookies'. To us, 'cookie' only applies to choc-chip things. I'm still adjusting to the minor language divergence.

As far as I know, this is the first time this idea has been done. If not, please inform me and I'll apologize for being wrong. I think it's quite original, what do you think?

Other than that, I don't have much to say...except to enjoy the story. :D

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If Naruto had been wiser, he maybe would have understood that even the smallest changes in the present could have consequences so far reaching it was indescribable. If Naruto had been initially stronger, perhaps he could have averted those changes completely. But as it was, Naruto was a genin. A sloppy and unfocused _genin._ His only experience was with the cruelties of life and the flaws of the human mind, which, while it would undoubtedly pave his path to wisdom, was not enough on its own. _Because_ Naruto was fresh to battle, _because_ he'd never had or wanted any semblance of thoughtfulness, _everything_ changed. All the futures; the joys and pains of a world not yet tasted, it all scattered on the wind, where it fizzled away to nothing.

And thus, in consequence, a new future, with all of its challenge, erupted from a level surface like lava from a volcano. But, as with everything, the level surface had to first be established, and the one factor which changed everything had to first present itself, in all its orange glory.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked, oddly quietly, mindful of his teammates but a short distance away, watching their charge like a hawk. With a silent sigh, Kakashi steeled himself for the inevitable onslaught of genin stupidity that ensued whenever the blond opened his mouth. He briefly glanced to his surroundings, taking in the trees, the earth, the sunlight through the leaves. Such was the joy of travelling. It was a shame they were being pursued. Kakashi was a true elite, and hadn't let his guard down since the first sign worthy of suspicion.

"Yes, Naruto?" Kakashi was mildly taken aback by the undecided look in his student's eyes, and the hesitance with which he continued.

"...I was wondering, seeings you have to teach me and all..." He shifted uneasily. He was probably going to ask an awkward question, like 'what's the deal with your eye?' or- "What's your whole view on me and, um, my tenant?" _-not that._ Of all the things he'd been expecting, that was the last thing! Honestly, where on earth had that come from? Eye suddenly wide, Kakashi lost his focus in a dangerous situation for the first time in _years._

And, unfortunately, the enemy was intelligent enough to take advantage of it.

They exploded from the surrounding undergrowth like dysfunctional comets, twisting and crossing into their stances, positions, preemptive strikes. They spun, flipped out their chains, and within the span of the second they attacked. Kakashi, focus blown off by Naruto's _very personal_ question, barely dodged enough to save his life. In fact, the thought of Kawarimi didn't even occur to him. In all the reaction of a startled civilian, Kakashi recoiled out of the way, lucky enough that he had his shinobi reflexes to recoil far enough. He escaped death, but that was inconsequential to him, especially seeing as the next second he was in a miasma of pain.

Naruto and Sakura, frozen with shock, jumped at their sensei's scream, and jumped into the fray, Sasuke arriving from beside Tazuna to join them. Sasuke began a monsoon of shuriken and kunai in the direction of one, forcing him to abandon his position to dodge. Sakura noticed that the man was now out of range, and deployed a kunai plus explosion tag at him, rushing with Naruto to begin an attack on the other. Apparently, Sakura's gambit had worked and the first was out of commission, as Sasuke sprung to join them.

The blond demon container winced at the sight of their opponent's gauntlets, huge and clawlike with their metallic sheen. He'd do his best to avoid those. As it turned out, Naruto's perception of the gauntlet granted him awareness that it was being swiped at him, and he ducked away, retreating a few meters to deploy three shadow clones in his aid.

It was all for nothing. Sakura had sprung up onto a tree to avoid a kick, and to throw a kunai which was very pointless considering it was evaded easily. Sasuke then took a risky move, throwing a punch that would leave him open to attack were it to miss.

And of course, it _did_ miss. The attacker thrust forward his fist in a blow Sasuke couldn't possibly hope to avoid, that gauntlet would pierce into the artery in his left arm, he'd _die._

There was one factor that prevented that.

Kakashi.

Naturally, after he'd been injured he'd been considered out of the picture and no one spared him a second glance, but he'd accented very clearly that he'd die for his comrades. Here he was, living up to it by taking Sasuke's blow for him, right arm already mauled beyond recognition as having once been a limb. The gauntlet pierced into his chest, not reaching any vital organs but causing a deep and obviously serious injury. With that, Hatake Kakashi struck his last blow, voice like a whisper carried away by the wind.

"...Tsunagari no Shukumei....no jutsu." And he struck the the enemy, once. All of a sudden, both enemy and teacher dropped to the ground, Kakashi clutching his most recent wound with his only hand, and the attacker clutching the same spot, though there was no wound. His right arm hung limp as if it weren't there.

The enemy was obviously defeated. With that thought, all three students surrounded Kakashi with alarm. "Sensei!" Sakura cried, supporting him as he fell.

"Kakashi-sensei?!" Naruto sounded _so_ shocked....poor kid. Kakashi managed a small smile, and gestured weakly to his ruined arm.

"This arm...came off right at the artery....I'd have bled to death anyway, and none of you are healers."

"What the hell, sensei?! What the fuck do you mean?!" Naruto sounded choked, angry in a way wet with tears. Sakura was trembling, eyes wide, and Sasuke seemed frozen in a silent state of shock.

"The gauntlet's poisoned....this is a good, deep wound, I'd say I've got enough of it to kill three men..." Kakashi abruptly began coughing, but suppressed it enough to carry on talking. "I told you, people who abandon their comrades are worse than trash. I've lived up to that, at least." He coughed once, and blood splattered to the ground. "That jutsu....it's called the 'Link of Destiny'. It links the user to the victim, and when the user is injured the victim gets the effects too....likewise, when I die, so will he."

"D-die?" Sakura asked, voice hardly a whisper.

"Look at me. I'm bleeding to death already, and this poison's fast working...I don't have more than a few minutes."

"Fuck no, sensei! We'll get you back to Konoha! You're not fucking gonna die! You're a jounin!" Naruto spat, eyes blazing.

"All running would do is make the poison spread quicker. We're much too far from Konoha...much too far." Kakashi glared at hs students, halting their protests. _"Listen to me._ This is my last advice to you. Those ninja were after Tazuna. He's hiding something. This mission is at least a B rank now, and there are probably going to be even stronger nins to come. They'll hunt you down. They'll kill you. _It's too far away from Konoha._" He stressed his point, as much as he could. "They _will_ find you before you can get back. Your best chance is to go on. And Naruto..." He turned his attention to the stricken boy, thinking he owed him this much. "I have to answer your question."

"Sensei....!" Naruto choked out.

"At first...in the beginning....I hated you. I thought you were the one responsible. But then I saw you taking so much crap from those villagers...without even fighting back. I realized that if you really were responsible, you'd sooner kill them all rather than let them be so disrespectful. I don't hate you, Naruto. You're sloppy right now, you're a mess. But if you ever survive this shit, you'll grow." Sasuke and Sakura didn't understand. What was their sensei talking about? But evidently Naruto understood, and he looked more emotional than they'd ever seen him. His face was the picture of broken despair. "If you survive, ask Sandaime-sama about your father. You'll be a great leader, just like he was...." Kakashi managed a smile. "Protect your teammates. Survive. Do you understand?"

Naruto had long given up hopes of his sensei surviving. This was it. He opened his mouth, then closed it. he took a shuddering breath before replying. "Yes, sensei. Good luck." He lowered his head slightly, a respectful bow. The first and last time Kakashi would see it.

All three genin were taken aback by the relaxation of their sensei's features the next minute, like his purpose in life was fulfilled and he could finally rest. For the last time, his eye curved into that odd eye-smile of his, and he sighed. "See you in hell, kid." he rasped, defiant in the face of death. "Hopefully....not....too soon..."

The instant he uttered the last syllable, his fingers twitched and became taut. All expression vanished from his eye, and it became blank. A few meters away, the ninja gave a shuddering gasp and was still.

Hatake Kakashi, Copy-nin Kakashi, Sharingan no Kakashi....by some twist of fate, had ended.

And Naruto's life would never be the same again.

Team 7 sat there in blinding silence for several long, agonizing seconds, before Naruto astutely summed up the situation with one word.

"....Shit." As if that had been the trigger, Sasuke closed his eyes and was evidently attempting to calm himself through breathing exercises, but failing miserably. As well as that, Sakura began hyperventilating to the extreme, eyes wide with her terror and the tears that poured from them. Naruto frowned, trying to work out the jumble in his mind.

Kakashi-sensei was dead. It was likely there were very powerful ninja after them. If they attempted to return to Konoha, they would probably be caught before they got there. Confrontation was to be avoided at all costs, if at all possible. They had to continue with a B or higher ranked mission on their own. A fresh out of the academy genin team with no experience. They were on their own. Hopelessly outclassed, and on their own.

Naruto had to admit, the situation looked hopeless.

_"You'll be a great leader, just like he was. Protect your teammates. Survive."_

But when had he ever died under hopeless situations? He looked to his companions, who were extremely distressed and obviously not used to keeping their head in a crisis. Tazuna was a way away, slumped against a tree and staring at Kakashi's corpse, sweating bullets.

_"Those ninja were after Tazuna. He's hiding something."_

If anything, Naruto would take his sensei's last words to mind. He steeled himself, calmed to an extent he'd never done before, even when working out tactics to evade the villagers.

"Calm down?" Naruto tried, though it was a pathetic attempt and sounded like a question. His teammates barely noticed he'd spoken. It was a disaster. They couldn't keep their cool at all! And they were supposed to be ninja....sheesh.

Then Naruto remembered that they hadn't been through what he had. They'd never had experience with being in a situation with people that could kill you in pursuit. They'd never learned that panicking was the absolute worst thing you could do in a crisis. You couldn't plan, you couldn't fight, you couldn't run. In this respect, he was far more experienced than they were. This was his duty.

_"Protect your teammates."_

_"You'll be a great leader."_

_"Survive."_

"Calm down, all of you!" He near snarled, his sharp and authorative tone taking all three of his companions utterly by surprise. "Calm the _hell_ down! Breathe! Remember the rule about how to act in a crisis! _You never panic!_"

They stared at him, wide eyed. Tazuna stammered nonsense, blubbering. "Shut up, old man. I'll talk to you in a minute." Naruto ordered, fixing his teammates with a hard look. He forced himself not to think about the corpse beside him, he couldn't afford to panic as well. They'd be doomed. He waited until Sasuke and Sakura were too baffled with him to be panicking anymore. Good. He'd distracted them. "Thank you." He sighed.

"What the hell, dobe?" Sasuke suddenly demanded. "What the hell was that all about? Ordering us about....tch."

"I was right, wasn't I?!" Naruto growled, and before Sasuke had a chance to say anything, he rounded on the pinkette. "Sakura! What's the rule about crisises and panicking?"

"Sh-shinobi rule number fourteen," Sakura stammered, wondering who this was and what he'd done with Naruto. "Above all things, in a crisis a shinobi must not lose his equilibrium. He must maintain complete focus or he will fail."

"Good." Naruto's voice was still harsh. He didn't feel like himself. "You're completely right. What kind of situation are we in right now, huh? A crisis! And what do you do?! You panic and start blubbering like scared civilians! Considering I'm the only one who_ didn't_ panic, I think you should shut up and listen to me!" Sasuke and Sakura stared at him with morbid shock, and a clear expression of '_what the fuck?'_. This was not the idiot Naruto. This was....something different. "Finally." Naruto breathed out in a relieved sigh. "Right, so Kakashi-sensei's dead. We know that genin would never be sent on a b-rank mission unless they'd been training for years, and even then they usually have to be chuunin to take one. That means, even if we did have Kakashi-sensei, we'd be at a major disadvantage. The jounin sensei is supposed to protect their team, and he _did._ He saved your life, Sasuke, so he's done his job. Thing is, now we don't have a jounin to protect us anymore. We're in deep shit! We've got chuunin rank ninja and maybe even jounin after us, and we've got no way to send a message for reinforcements." Naruto took a deep breath, and continued.

"We've come over two hundred miles from Konoha. Our enemies are fast and strong, we've been travelling and we're tired and weak. We're in trouble. If we try to get back to Konoha, they'll catch us and they'll kill us. Even if we left the old man they'd probably still kill us for knowing too much about their operations. We're closer to Wave, much closer. We might actually stand a chance of getting there alive. We're gonna have to go ahead with this mission, against the odds." Sakura opened her mouth, wanting to say something but finding no words. She closed it again. As for Sasuke, he was trying to suppress his pride, because he understood that what the 'dobe' was saying made sense. He didn't know where all the logic had come from, but he wasn't complaining. He could barely think straight at the moment.

"We should set up camp for today. Hide all the evidence that there was ever a fight, and maybe they won't come as fast. We should get as much rest as possible...and we should take Kakashi-sensei's supplies. We can't let anything go to waste. Take the supplies of those dead ninja too. We need all we can get. I'll make some Kage Bunshin and they'll guard the camp while we rest. Once we've got all their stuff, teme, you can katon them. As for sensei..." Naruto shuddered. "We..._should_ destroy his body too....but do it in a funeral-ish way. Properly. We can keep the ashes so he can be buried when we get back home. Who has a watertight container?"

Tazuna hesitantly raised his hand. "....Me? You'll have to clear the food out of it, though." He reached into his back hurriedly. Naruto raised an eyebrow and glared at him scathingly.

"About time you're good for something." he muttered to himself, then louder, he continued his orders. "What the hell are you waiting for? Get to it!" he glared, showing that he wasn't going to accept _any_ shit from _anyone._

"Dobe....why are _you_ ordering us around?" Sasuke bit out, seeming frustrated and conflicted. Naruto sneered at him.

"Because I've been in situations when I needed to run for my life and make up a plan to survive. You haven't. I don't care how badly your ego will be bruised by listening to me, I don't care what fucked up emo problems you have, I know what to do and you don't. Maybe later when our lives aren't in danger we can argue about it, but for now _shut up_ and for fuck's sake _get to work._ I'll set up camp for all of us, you start looting. Old man, stay where you are." Sasuke glared, and muttered something inaudible, but went with Sakura to begin on one of the enemies. Sakura suddenly realized that she'd _killed_ someone, but admirably forced it to the back of her head. She couldn't afford to think about it now. She determinedly did not go near the corpse she'd accidentally caused.

Naruto, on the other hand, had created roughly twenty clones, five of which were guarding Tazuna, five of which were keeping watch on the surrounding forest, and the last ten which were helping Naruto set up the tents. He realized that technically, each of them could have their own tent now, due to Kakashi-sensei's death, but that wouldn't work for several reasons. One, they needed to cut as much weight as possible, travel as lightly as they could. Secondly, it had been Kakashi-sensei's. Ninja tools were one thing - they were _meant_ to be used...but someone's belonging like that? No, it would be disrespectful.

He and Sasuke had shared a tent on the mission, and they'd complained about it until it became clear that it wouldn't change anything. Kakashi got his own tent because he was jounin, and Sakura got her own tent because she was a girl. He laid his late sense's tent aside, and set up Tazuna's tarp. He hadn't brought anything for shelter other than it, and that was fine with him. Old man had gotten his sensei killed.

He silently slipped next to his teammates, who were just about finishing up taking Kakashi-sensei's supplies. Quietly. Solemn.

"Well done." Naruto said quietly, not taking his eyes from the blank face of the man who'd been alive not an hour ago. Hesitantly, he reached out and closed the one visible eye. "We should cremate him with his mask and headband. A headband it an important thing to a ninja...and I'm sure that mask is something important too. We should respect his wishes for privacy. Do you think so?"

Oddly subdued, Sasuke gave a slight nod. "Yeah, dobe. I do."

"Yes..." Sakura whispered, voice saturated with emotion.

Naruto sighed, and gestured jerkily to the enemy corpses, long stripped of all poison and weapons and supplies....and money. "Burn them first and put the ashes in a bush or something. Make sure you don't burn any of the forest and make sure you burn them quickly enough that there's no smoke. We can't afford to be spotted. Try not to be too loud when saying the jutsu and tone down the chakra a bit. Okay?" Sasuke nodded in affirmation, and turned to the missing-nins. He breezed through th handseals, ending on the tiger seal, _tora._

"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu." Sasuke said quietly, lacking all the falir and ferocity of an attack. Nevertheless, the resulting flames burned the enemies to crisps in an instant, leaving only a pile of ashes. Quick as a flash, Naruto layered the spare tarp on it.

"We'll leave that on until we know it's not smoking. " Naruto explained. "This way even some of the burn smell is suppressed." He then bunched the sheet around the ashes, and carried them carefully over to a large thorny thicket, full of leaves and treacherous spines, and tipped the ashes in. He kicked the bush with his foot a few times until all of the ash had fallen between the thorn's grasp and out of sight. He turned. "That should do it. Now we should..." He swallowed. "Give Kakashi-sensei a sort of funeral. He'll have a proper one back in Konoha, sure, but we can't just burn him up without doing anything..."

"Yeah..." Sakura agreed, solemn and sad. Her voice was strained. Sasuke narrowed his eyes.

"You're doing a better job of this whole mess than I'd have thought, dobe. I agree, we should do a funeral...or something." He shrugged, leaving Naruto to wonder whether he'd been insulted or complimented. Probably both. Tch.

"Well, let's take sensei back to camp then. We can have some of the ration bars." He wrinkled his nose. Those bars were dry and tasted horrible....but hell, ninja life. Small murmurs of agreement wafted from his teammates, and they followed him to the secluded clearing where he'd set up camp. At a small mental nudge, his guard clones followed, pulling Tazuna along. The civilian looked extremely nervous. Naruto derived little satisfaction from that. "Tazuna. Container, please." Their escort started, and rummaged hurriedly, handing over a small rectangular container made of red wood apparently polished in something waterproof. It looked quite nice, actually. Naruto nodded approvingly. "Not bad. Thanks." Tazuna mumbled something incomprehensible, probably a 'you're welcome' or something.

He and his teammates set Kakashi down in the middle of the camp, all the while his clones took up position in the surrounding trees to keep watch effectively. Wordlessly, the three gathered silently around the body, Tazuna far away and excluded from the intimacy of mourning the dead.

At last, Naruto spoke, his voice reluctant and resigned. "...I suppose it's time to say bye."

"...Yeah." Sakura spoke softly. "Do you think we should...say what needs to be said alone, or not?"

Naruto pondered it for a moment. "I think...it would be better if we all heard each other. We _are_ teammates after all, maybe we should start trusting eachother. I think....I think sensei would like that."

"...Me too, Naruto." Sasuke sighed, and Naruto couldn't be fussed to be surprised over the use of his name.

After a brief silence, Sakura spoke up timidly. "Well...should I go first?"

"...Sure, I guess. Sasuke?" Naruto shrugged weakly, and glanced to the Uchiha.

He simply beckoned with a nod of his head, obsidian gaze level, but softer and sadder than normal.

Sakura cleared her throat, and her voice at first wavered. "S...sensei...I never paid much attention to your training.....I'm sorry. Maybe if I'd listened and learned better, you wouldn't have d-died." She was barely aware of the others beside her. Though she felt them analyzing her speech, calculating and formulating their own opinions, it didn't seem to matter. "I was blind. You told us that being a ninja isn't a game. I...still didn't get it. Now I do, but it's too late, isn't it?" Her voice cracked a little, and her words flowed more easily despite how it trembled. It was funny how death always brought out what you really felt.

"This isn't a game. I've been...stupid, it's ridiculous. I've been more worried about boys and how I look than being a ninja. I'm sorry it took...this...to make me realize what this life of mine is now." All the while she spoke, her teammates listened and silently their opinions of her rose. If anything good could come from this _disaster, _maybe it would be the personality changes in those left behind. "I'm going to try my hardest from now on. I'll train and I..._we..._will survive. Ino can chase Sasuke if she wants, but I won't anymore. I need to get serious....sensei, I won't let you down if it's in my power." She bowed her head, cheeks flaming and suddenly extremely aware of the others, and the speech she'd given in front of them. She was slightly startled when Naruto rubbed her shoulder reasuringly with a small smile.

"Well said, Sakura." Again, no 'chan'. Perhaps he'd had the same 'be serious' epiphany as her. He glanced to the ebony-haired genin. "Sasuke...? Do you want to...." He trailed off, but it was obvious what he was asking. Sasuke nodded, and opened his mouth to talk. The ensuing speech was possibly the most either of them had ever heard Sasuke talk at one time.

"...I know, Kakashi-sensei, that like all humans, you definitely weren't perfect. You favoured me over Naruto and Sakura, because I'm the last Uchiha, and probably for other reasons I don't even know. None of us knew you. None of us knew who you really were at all. You were a good ninja....you probably wouldn't need that mask of yours to hide everything that needed to be hidden. I didn't know you, and for that, I am ashamed to say, I'm glad. I know what the death of someone close to you feels like, and I don't ever want that again, no matter how selfish it is. You've been a ninja for a long time, sensei. I'm sure you've had your share of dead comrades. They'll be waiting for you, I suppose, wherever it is we go...I bet death's a nice end for you, huh? And you get to uphold your strictest moral while doing it." Sasuke smirked, but the expression was curved with bitterness. "Rest in peace, Kakashi. I know I won't." He glanced, his eyes dull and dead, at Naruto, fixing him with a long and guarded stare. Sakura sat quietly, taking in Sasuke's words and trying to make sense of what it meant about his character.

Naruto gave a gusty sigh, and began. "I've got a lot to apologize for, I guess. I'm sorry for being such an idiot and not training harder. Old man Hokage said to me once that I'm potential incarnate, and I didn't know what he meant. I remember the day of graduation, when I learned a jounin-rank kinjutsu because I was so determined to. I suppose I know that if I've got the right resolve, there shouldn't be anything I can't do eventually. But I didn't get it, and I fucked up. Big time. I should have known not to ask a question like that in mission, even if it was supposed to be low risk." Naruto stared at the corpse, azure eyes dulled and tired. "I can't blame you for hating me. Everyone else did. They still do." A small smile struggled to his features. "But the fact that, in the end, you _didn't_ hate me...thanks. There's not many people I've heard that from. I can't believe I let you, one of those people, die." He sighed again. "Still, it's what we do, isn't it? We fuck up and we learn from our mistakes, and we'll get stronger as long as we know we _did_ fuck up. This situation looks hopeless right now, and I honestly don't know how we're gonna get through it alive. But I've never given up and I'm not going to start now." He scowled.

"I've got my resolve again, sensei. Before, I had nothing to fight for except a dream so far away it might as well be impossible. I'll get there eventually. I know I will. You said I'd be a great leader, sensei. I'll live up to that. I'll protect my comrades....my teammates, and I'll sacrifice what I have to, like Yondaime did. I've got people to protect, and I can't believe I didn't realize that. I've got a good grounding on how to survive when you think you're gonna die, and the world's out for your blood...maybe I'll be able to do this. Either I win, and we get through this and back home, alive. Or we die, and I'll see you in hell, just like you said." He gave a dark chuckle, which sounded unnatural from bright and cheery Naruto. "Whatever the hell, I'll give up whatever I need to as long as I keep us alive. My life, my soul....even my fucking humanity if I have to. I'd make a deal with the devil if it'd help, and I know you know what that means. Don't worry, I'll check for the fine print. I'm a shinobi, after all." He chuckled again, and the sound was somewhat choked, but lacking the dark undertone of his previous one.

"All of us will survive to get back home. Your sacrifice won't be for nothing, I'll make sure of that. I'll live to ask who my father was....and whoever he was, I'll live up to this expectation you have of me...whatever it is. Go in peace, sensei. Thank you....and...sorry." He stood, abruptly, and sent Sasuke a meaningful look. He understood, as did Sakura, who sadly backed away.

Sasuke's hands passed through the seals slowly, almost painfully so. He sighed, and spoke the words clearly. "Katon: Goukakyuu no jutsu."

All of them, all three plus Tazuna, watched as the corpse of a great man turned to ash, and no words were spoken. All three students bowed their heads, then Naruto rushed to conseal the minor amount of smoke. Together, they began gathering the ashes and storing them away into the well made mahogany box.

Overhead, the sun's fire died into the horizon, and the skies themselves split open and bled across the distance.

xxxxx

There was no disturbance in the night. Either way, Naruto did not get more than an hour's sleep at the time. The forest tormented him with its twisting shadows, and his only reassurance was the unchanged howling of the wind through the night. He mused that it was odd he'd find the wind comforting, and he shouldn't seeings as it helped cover the traces of enemies, but he found it oddly calming.

Into the long hours of the night, Naruto had much time to ponder over things. Evasion plans, strategies, thousands of 'what if' scenarios and what to do if they came about. He was mildly surprised strategy came so easily to him, then he remembered he'd been planning his pranks in a similar manner for a good while. It was like advanced sports. Play a prank, piss off villagers, try to escape alive. If they caught him there was no doubt what they'd do. He shivered. It didn't matter now, though. He was a ninja...his village-wide pranking days were over.

It baffled him how easy it was to slip into the mindset of a war veteran, ignore that a trusted and valued comrade had just died. It was all too simple to push that turmoil aside, to be dealt with later. He supposed he did that all his life - he bottled up the sadness and lonliness in every hour of the day, then when he was alone and safe he let it out. At the moment, he was most definitely not safe. Perhaps it was some sort of automatic sanity-protecting mechanism his brain had developed? He grinned slightly at the thought.

Then he mused on his fighting style. Like a beserker, power and no strategy. A straight on Kage Bunshin assault. It would be _so_ much more effective if the damn things weren't so delicate. He started at the idea that suddenly came upon him. Maybe he could _improve_ the Kage Bunshin? Unsure, he mused on the long string of handseals the jutsu demanded. He never did them all, it would take up too much time. Instead, he moved his chakra in the shapes of the handseals, much quicker than he could move his hands, and only showed the final seal. He concentrated, trying to remember what Iruka-sensei had said about the seals.

So Kage Bunshin was Inu, Tori, Uma, Hebi, Nezumi, Saru, Hitsuji, Tora, Hitsuji. Inu was one of the most common handseals to begin a jutsu on, it gave foundation and intent. Tori was a very erratic handseal, used for unusual jutsus and its instability had a tendancy to make the jutsu difficult or dangerous. To counter that, afterwards was Uma, the seal of stability. Uma 'smoothed' over chaos in a jutsu and made it less risky. If a person used a jutsu with Tori and not Uma, something was bound to fuck up. Hebi, the seal of intent. It was this seal which read the purpose of the jutsu and decided a rough outcome. The jutsus without it were those tricky ones that had completely different effects depending on the amount of chakra and so on. Without Hebi, an intended Katon jutsu could become a Suiton. Nezumi, after that, was the seal of imitation, the intent to mimic or copy something. That would explain the 'clone' part of the jutsu.

Then there was Saru, the seal of connection. It linked all the seals together and provided harmony among them, allowing them to all work together without deciding they each wanted to do something different.

Next was Hitsuji, the seal of force. If Hitsuji was among the seals for a jutsu, it implied that the user really had to focus and force the jutsu to work. It was probably that Hitsuji seal which made the Kage Bunshin so difficult to learn.

Tora. The seal of power. Tora represented brute strength in a jutsu, the potential for very scary greatness. The downside was that it was a very unstable seal, and usually needed one of the seals of balance to make it safe. All Katon jutsu contained Tora, but also contained Oushi, the seal of stability. Otherwise the fire would burn out of their control and wouldn't follow the chakra's commands. It was the same for all other jutsu involving Tora, even if they weren't Katon.

Kage Bunshin didn't have an Oushi seal at all. It had _Hitsuji, Tora, _and _Hitsuji_ as its last seals! That was just..._stupid._ What idiot had thought it was a good idea to mix the seal of power and instability with _two_ seals of force and pressure? That obviously made it really freaking hard to do, unstable, and _really_ chakra consuming! Why the hell had no one studied the seals sooner?!

Naruto sat up, pondering his own question. According to the old man, most Jounin couldn't make more than four clones without seriously exhausting themselves. He wondered how big that made his reserves, if he could create hundreds without feeling it. He shook off that thought, and returned to the issue.

If most jounin could die from using it quite easily....that would definitely mean it should be a Kinjutsu, as it was. And because it was a Kinjutsu, and thus very few people even knew it, people assumed there was no use changing it. If it was forbidden, it was forbidden, end of story. He supposed that made sense.

He also supposed it was his duty to change that little fuck up.

Naruto wondered what seals to add in. Perhaps after the first Hitsuji he should add a Saru, to provide more link and cooperation. He nodded to that, then continued thinking. After the Tora, it needed an Oushi. No second thoughts, he added that to his mental seal list. After Tora it _definitely_ needed some semblance of stability. He pondered adding a Hebi between Oushi and Hitsuji, to finalize the purpose and thus make the jutsu overall easier to perform. He nodded. That would work. He decided to test it out, and carefully ran slowly through the seals, with his hands as not to make any mistakes.

Inu, Tori, Uma, Hebi, Nezumi, Saru, Hitsuji, Saru, Tora, Oushi, Hitsuji. As soon as he formed the final seal, he didn't say a thing. Apparently, if you tried to tell a jutsu to be something it wasn't, it could have disastrous consequences. He waited.

Eight clones formed outside his tent, and Naruto started in surprise. He'd only put enough chakra in for five... He looked at them, who seemed momentarily confused, and then blinked at him uncertainly.

"Right..." he said quietly, mindful of his comrades asleep nearby. He walked out slowly and groggily. "Alright, you eight. What do you think?"

"Ehm...." One clone started, sounding oddly disturbed. "This _does not_ feel like Kage Bunshin. You know, when you're a Kage Bunshin you can feel your chakra running out by the second. I....don't. It's weird."

The others nodded in agreement, as if under some great epiphany. "Yeah, it feels like we're realer, or whatever."

"Keep your voices down, idiots!" Naruto hissed through his teeth, while running over what the clones had said.

"...You do realize you just called yourself an idiot, right?" A clone sniggered.

"Shut it!" He snapped, voice still hushed. He inspected the clone that spoke. "You, hold still."

The clone knew what was coming. "Aw, hell." It whined. "Why do I have to be the test subject?" Naruto ignored it, and introduced his fist to its jaw. Much to his surprise, the _very_ heavy blow merely sent the clone flying backwards, as if it had been the real thing that had been hit. It sat up abruptly, rubbing the point of contact. "Ow!" It complained. "What the....hell?" An expression of realization dawned on its face, as well as on the other clones.

"He didn't pop." Another clone remarked in amazement. Naruto blinked.

"Alright, I'll need to test on someone else. You." He pointed to another clone, then punched it just as solidly. It didn't even try to defend itself. Like the other clone, rather than dispelling, its body acted remarkably like a real one. "Okay...so we've confirmed that you lot can definitely take a hit. Let's see how far that goes." he grinned, and flipped out a kunai. He grabbed the arm of a third clone that hadn't been damaged yet, and made a sharp cut across the back of its hand.

"Do that more carefully, baka!" The clone huffed, wincing in pain a little, then stared in fascination at its wound.

The kunai had very much broken skin, and the wound was most definitely bleeding. Profusely. It whistled, impressed.

"That's a new one." It commented, eyed suddenly alight, then it blinked. "...It isn't healing." Of course, Naruto got the experiences of his shadow clones once they dispelled. So he knew what being one felt like. But, also, his shadow clones got all of his memories. Essentially, they were extremely fragile copies of him. These distinctly less fragile clones also had his memories, and so they knew that if they were the original, such a wound would already be healing.

This one wasn't.

Naruto huffed, feeling oddly pleased at his research. Obviously the Kyuubi didn't pass on to his clones, so they didn't have the advanced healing. But the whisker marks were more like birthmarks really, even if kyuubi did cause them. So those passed over. He wondered if his inhuman stamina had passed on or not.

"I don't think the furball's effects go over to clones." Naruto explained his theory. "We'll have to see what happens if someone cuts your throats, how much you can bleed, if you can use jutsu....we'd better get away from camp for this." Naruto scrawled a message in the fine earth of the clearing, in case they woke up. _Experimenting with clones. Looks very promising. Won't go far. -U.N._

Naruto abruptly jumped into the trees, followed instantly by his clones. The bleeding one clutched its hand, feeling uncomfortable with the unfamiliar sensation of a constant wound. They stopped not far from the previous day's battlezone, but further into the treeline so as not to be in the open. Naruto stopped, and beckoned to an as of yet unharmed clone. "Right, I'm gonna try and kill you, okay?" He said pleasantly.

The clone looked very disturbed, and glared at him. "If you must..." Naruto grinned, and shoved a kunai into its throat, trying to to dwell too much on the thought that technically he'd just stabbed himself in the throat.

The cloan gave a very realistic choked gurgle, and when the kunai was removed it started bleeding like all hell. Naruto and the other clones watched, grossed out but morbidly interested, as the experiment struggled to keep its balance. Its grip on the branch loosened, gradually, and it dropped of the branch, eyes lolling. Naruto caught it by its jumpsuit, and inspected. His eyes widened. "It's like, dead. Not breathing. ANd it hasn't dispelled yet."

"Whoa." The clone with the bleeding hand remarked, though a little faintly. "Does it just stay there and rot, or what?"

Naruto shrugged. "Dunno. Let's see if I can dispell it." There were several ways a shadow clone could dispell. One, they ran out of chakra. Two, they were damaged. Three, they dispelled themselves mentally. Four, the creator dispelled them mentally. Obviously, point two didn't seem to apply to these clones, and the other three points remained untested.

"Ooh." A clone remarked. "It's really weird looking at yourself bleeding and dead."

"Tell me abou- hey, the hell?" He stared. "Fucking rigor mortis is setting in! Seriously, it's like you're actual copies of me....minus the fox and shit."

"Rigor mortis?" The others were fascinated. "Whatever, try dispelling him...it." One suggested, shuffling. It happened to be the bleeding one.

Naruto nodded, and focused on the mental release, on the dead clone in particular.

It went up in smoke, leaving no blood or evidence it had ever existed, and handing him all the grisly details of what it was like to be stabbed in the throat and die. Naruto's eyes widened and he smirked. "Well. That's one method confirmed. Who wants to try dispelling themselves?" The one with the injured hand volunteered.

"Please." It pleaded. "This fricken hand is really uncomfortable." Naruto nodded to it, and it concentrated. It disappeared, providing him with what wounds that didn't heal felt like.

"Okay, so that still works. Good." Naruto turned to the six still there. "Who wants to try a jutsu?"

"Me," A labrat volunteered, then at his master's affirmation did the final seal of the ordinary Kage Bunshin.

Ten appeared, with a disgustingly weak flare of chakra, in comparison to when _he_ used the technique. The clone who'd attempted it looked slight winded. "Wow, that's pathetic." it winced. "I don't think I've got enough chakra for more than fifty clones."

Naruto gave the second-hand shadow clones a calculating look, then punched one. It dispelled. "Well, obviously second-hand kage bunshin act like normal ones with less chakra. So there's a flaw in you guys. Kill those second-hands, and someone have a _quiet _fight with someone else to see if you feel as strong and stuff." The poor second-hand clones were dispelled instantly, and a random two of the experimental clones went for eachother furiously, punching and brawling. To Naruto, they seemed just as fast as him, which was pleasing. After a good while of the two fighting, Naruto called them to a halt.

"Alright. How do you feel? Tired? Weaker than normal? What?" Naruto prompted. The clones grinned, evidently not tired at all.

"Just as strong as ever, boss! And I think we got the stamina and everything." One proclaimed.

Naruto shot his own grin back at them. "Great to hear it! Now, someone henge. I want to see if it holds after you die." He had an idea, and apparently the clones understood. Following the track of his mind, there were three who transformed. There was now a Sasuke, Sakura, and Tazuna there. He nodded approvingly, but winced. If he wanted to experiment he'd have to 'kill' them, per se, and considering their appearence it felt very wrong. A clone spoke up hesitantly.

"I'll do it if you want, boss." It offered, uneasy as he was, but understanding it was a lesser entity. He shot it a concerned but thankful look.

"I'll be getting the memories," He commented. "So I don't think it makes much of a difference...but yeah, thanks. Go ahead." Determinedly, the clone brandished a kunai and slit the throats of the three clones, carefully and quickly. They gurgled, much in the way of the first dead clone, and died in a very identical fashion too. To his delight, the henge didn't lift even after they were dead. he had no idea wy that was, but hell, he now had the best decoy in the world! He didn't smile though, because it made him feel incomparably sick to see his teammates dead like that. He dispelled the three, and looked to the three remaining. "Right, so that's good. I'm going to kill one of you and just leave you in the tent for the night, 'kay? I want to see if you'll last a long time." With that, he threw a kunai with impressive accuracy into a clone's throat. The poor thing choked, and died shortly after. Naruto made some more of the new clones, being careful with the handseals and getting a feel for them. Again, he didn't say anything, because he hadn't created a name for the jutsu yet.

There were ten clones, to replace the ones on guard. These were much more effective, anyway. He dispelled the normal shadow clones, feeling their memories of stillness return to him. He sent the new clones, plus the leftover experiments, to take their positions on camp perimeter. Meanwhile, Naruto erased the message in the dirt, pulled his clone's body into his tent, and fell asleep, feeling quite pleased with himself. The traumatic effects of the day were, as of now, temporarily forgotten.

xxxxxxx

"Psst, boss." A clone prodded him. "You told us to wake you up at dawn."

Naruto was about to resume his trademark '_not_-a-morning-person' routine, but then recalled the severity of the situation, and got up instantly, ignoring the tired protests of his muscles. He inspected the clone body, lying nearby, and wrinkled his nose. It was cold now, and very pale. The blood had dried into a sickening, metallic mess, and when he flipped its arm it was revealed it was well into severe rigor mortis. Very stiff. They definitely lasted a while when dead....good. He nodded to the clone.

"Thanks. By the way, I thought of naming the jutsu Chikage no Jutsu. What do you think?"

The clone blinked. "Blood shadow. It fits, I suppose. Cause, like, we're you're shadows and we've got blood. Yeah, I think that works."

"Thanks." Naruto thanked, technically, himself, and exited the tent closely followed by his (live) clone. Another dropped down from a tree, next to Tazuna, and prodded him, not gentle in the slightest.

"Wake up. you fricken old drunk." The clone growled, irritated. The 'old drunk' did so immediately, brushing away from the unexpected assault with alarm. Naruto nodded approvingly.

"We're gonna have a word with you, once the others are awake." Naruto sneered, and approached Sasuke's tent. "Teme! Wake up, it's sunrise."

There came an irritated string of incomprehensible grumbling and curses, and Naruto took that as affirmation.

"Great! I'll just go wake up Sakura-cha....I mean, Sakura, then we can have breakfast and crap." He said cheerfully, and approached the pinkette's tent to do exactly that. "Sakura, it's dawn. We need to get moving." he spoke urgently, but considerably more respectfully, because she was a girl and highly liable to kill him. The hiss from inside told him that she was awake, and he hastily retreated as to preserve his life. He and his clones laid out the rations, noticing with approval that Tazuna had his own food. Very convenient.

A few minutes later, his teammates trudged wearily from their tents, dropping down and decending on their rather digusting breakfast with gusto. They were extremely hungry. Naruto was equally hungry, if not more so, but he still ate his portion reluctantly, listening to his clone giving a report. Apparently, this one had assigned itself as their organizer.

"So, obviously we act like the real deal, only with less chakra and...um...other crap, but it sorta goes further than that. Kage bunshin can't sleep, right? So they make perfect guards?" Naruto nodded in confirmation. "Well, our lot were knackered. We could barely keep our eyes open. In the end we made a couple second-hands to watch for us while we rested a bit."

Naruto frowned. "That means in the future, we'll have to create more of you and you'll haave to rotate shifts. Even if you do have to sleep, you're still more effective than the normal ones." The clone nodded sharply, then gestured to his bewildered teammates.

"What are you two going on about?" Sakura asked, pertubed.

Naruto grinned. "That's something I'll need to talk to you guys about. I'll definitely help our situation, at least a bit. But first, Tazuna, I think you've got an explanation for us." He smiled pleasantly at the old man, but the dark glint in his eye told him he was feeling anything but pleasant.

Tazuna gulped. And he spoke. He told of how Gato and his gang had moved in and practically destroyed their livelihood beyond repair, preyed upon them, and ruined them. He explained that their last hope was this bridge of theirs, it would be their escape. And despite the loss, despite the danger, Naruto pitied him. It wasn't as if they had a choice, anyway.

"...Right. So as well as high rank missing nin, we might be up against a mafia gang too." Naruto deadpanned. Then he cheered a little. "But I've got something that'll help. Listen up." Despite him being an utter idiot, he was obviously the only one around who knew what they were doing. "So, in the night, I couldn't sleep. And I started thinking about Kage Bunshin and how much more awesome it would be it if was more sturdy. So I thought about the handseals, and then remembered what Iruka-sensei told us about them in the academy....the first few seals are good and make sense, but the last three..." he gave them a knowing look. "They're Hitsuji, Tora, and Hitsuji _again_."

"What?!" Sakura burst out, eyes wide. "No Oushi at all?!"

"Nope!" Naruto cheerfully confirmed. "I guess that's why it's a Kinjutsu. But anyway, I thought about how freaking stupid that combination was, so I added in some handseals. Saru after the first Hitsuji and Oushi after Tora. So I tried it out....it was a helluva lot easier to actually do, and I think it took up less chakra, too. Not sure. But that's not the main thing." his eyes gleamed with triumph. "They're real, solid, flesh-and-blood clones! They don't dispell when they're injured, and they bleed and everything. And apparently they even get tired like normal people. I killed a few clones to see what would happen...and they don't even dispell after they die. Hang on." He rushed into his tent, and retrieved the clone corpse.

"Naruto, that's disgusting!" Sakura looked faintly green. Sasuke snorted, eying the clone with morbid interest.

He shrugged. "Experiment, Sakura. It needed to be done. This one I kept, to see if they can hold out. It's gone into rigor mortis, its blood has dried, it's cold....the clones act just like a real human body. But I can dispell them and they can dispell themselves. They can even use jutsu, but the ones I made didn't have much chakra. Not compared to me, anyway. We've started calling Kage Bunshin made by them 'second-hands', cause they're like second hand clones." He grinned. "I named it Chikage no Jutsu. Best part, if they use henge, even that doesn't release when they die."

Realization dawned on sasuke's face, and shortly after, Sakura's. "A perfect decoy. Faked death. Not bad, dobe. I want to learn that technique."

Naruto's demeanor abruptly changed, and he glared. "Hell no, bastard. This is one of my first jutsu...besides, it's a modified Kinjutsu. Who knows what it could do to normal people?"

"Normal people." Sasuke deadpanned. "What defines 'normal'?"

Naruto shifted suddenly, uneasy. "I have....a _lot_ of chakra. I sort of figured that much from the Kage bunshin. Old man Hokage told me that an average jounin can make ten at most before suffering from chakra exhaustion. I can make over a hundred and not even feel the drain." They stared at him incredulously.

"...That's a lot of chakra, Naruto." Sakura pointed out timidly. "That much...you have more chakra than_ Sandaime_-sama?"

Naruto frowned. "I....guess so. But, moving on, while we were talking my clones packed up. I've got a plan to help us out." The others instantly grasped their focus, forgetting Naruto and his outrageous chakra capacity for now. "I henge some Chikage into those attacker guys, and kill them and shit. Then..." He looked uncomfortable. "We make a clone of that jounin guy Asuma. That way if the enemy finds him, and traces of us, they'll know he was the commander to a genin team, but because Asuma isn't as well known as sensei was, they probably won't try to dissect him or something. We also put in a Tazuna decoy, and make it look like we failed protecting him. It should distract them for a while. Then I'll make a copy of us three, and I'll send those back in Konoha's direction. It'll seem like we're returning to report a failed mission. They might go after the fakes....but if they don't, they'll take a message to Konoha asking for reinforcements. If they do hunt down the clones, then, fuck, I suppose." He shrugged. "Meanwhile, I have some clones carry Tazuna. That way we can go through the trees and not leave tracks. What do you think?"

They stared. "I never knew you were a strategist, kid." Tazuna commented.

"I'm not," Naruto deadpanned. "I'm a prankster. When given an outline, materials, and objective I figure out what to do with them. I guess it helps with the real life stuff. So shoudl we do that?"

"S-sure." Sakura nodded. Sasuke grunted, but gave a small nod. Naruto smiled, then made the handseals, making sure to do them fast enough that no one could remember what they were. Four clones appeared, and instantly they transformed. The semblance of the two nins made Naruto want to attack them, violently. But he restrained himself. The other two were perfect copies of Asuma and Tazuna. The original Naruto handed Sasuke a kunai.

"Here, kill Tazuna-clone with that, would you?"

Sasuke smirked. "Gladly." And he threw it into the clone's throat. The poor things had such identical deaths. Meanwhile, the enemy's impostors mauled Asuma. Naruto didn't want to maim a comrade. Once they were done killing Asuma-clone to a sufficient degree, Naruto attacked them, angrily. They provided little to no resistance, and he tore at their clone bodies with two kunai in his hands. He growled.

"Dammit, I know those aren't real but they still piss me off."

"Same." Sakura muttered darkly, staring with satisfaction at the corpses. "Let's move them, shall we?"

So, on mutual consent, they moved the corpses to the former battlefield, careful not to leave a blood trail They organized them in a realistic way, and admired their handiwork.

"They look quite convincing." Sakura praised.

"Thank you." Naruto said modestly, then created another three Chikage. Two transformed into copies of his teammates, and ripped a few injuries in themselves to make it look more convincing that they'd been in a battle. They saluted, then dropped into character, and sped off to Konoha through the trees. Naruto made yet another clone, which slung Tazuna unceremoniously over its shoulder, and as if on some silent signal, they leapt forward on their paths to the future.

And so it began.

xxxxxxxxx

That has to be the longest opening chapter I've ever written. Hell, longest _chapter._ Don't expect them all this long. Anyway, this story basically features a kickass Naruto, and to a lesser extent, Team 7. Kakashi is obviously dead. That won't be changing. Things will speed up soon and there will be action scenes. Please review. :)


	2. Inconstant Conquest

Naruto's planning was impressive, considering his so called stupidity. His execution of said plans was surpising, as he'd never shown aptitude before. But no matter how good his secret skills might be, he certainly overlooked several key details.

For one, his teammates were not stamina monsters like he was.

"N...aru...to....can't....breathe..." Sakura gasped behind him, and he and his clones paused on their current branch, looking back quizically.

Sakura was breathing heavily, clutching her side in an attempt to supress the pain there. Sasuke, while considerably more dignified about it, certainly looked quite as tired.

"Oh, shit. I forgot." He informed sheepishly. "Sorry. I guess we've been running a long time, huh?"

"Damn right, dobe." Sasuke agreed. His voice was strained, and a little rough.

"How....aren't you even....tired....Naru....to?" Sakura questioned weakly.

Naruto blinked, and his blood clones exchanged glances. "Nope."

"Stamina freak." Sasuke growled, shooting them an evil glare.

Tazuna laughed nervously. He was still over a clone's shoulder. The speed at which they'd been travelling was daunting to him, and he felt a little queasy.

"Well....uh....shit." Naruto frowned.

"Can't we... rest a bit....Naruto?" Sakura queried hopefully, and was startled at the abrupt change in her teammate's demeanor.

"Hell no! That would be stupid and dangerous. Chances are whoever's after us has a helluva lot more stamina than you do, so while we rest they'll be getting nearer! You're gonna have to hitch a ride on some clones." He made the seal, now confident enough with the sequence to shorten it. Two more clones appeared.

His teammates protested with what breath they had, while the clones slung them over their shoulders.

"It's either that or run yourself. I don't want to stop until late afternoon, at least. It's barely been a few hours since we set out."

"Six hours, actually." Tazuna informed, inspecting a miniature sun dial. "It's eleven am."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Naruto dismissed. "C'mon, get moving."

"Aye aye, boss!" The clones chirped, and abruptly took off again after Naruto's who'd resumed running.

"...This is uncomfortable." Sakura attempted to make conversation. The clone decided to ignore her.

"I'll say." Sasuke muttered. "It's humiliating. How come the dobe has so much endurance? Do you know, clone?" He prodded the one he was being carried by.

It shrugged. "Boss's buisiness. Why don't you ask him?" It wanted to avoid the issue as much as possible.

Sasuke harrumphed moodily, but was secretly grateful for the rest. They'd barely been keeping up at all, and every one of their joints burned.

And so the day went on.

xxxx

Zabuza sliced the head off the stupid genin, and she started a scream that never finished due to her lack of vocal cords. He frowned, and turned to the last two, who had taken the _exact same freaking stances._ Then they both leapt forward in the same way. He dodged, and eyed them suspiciously.

It was like their fighting styles were exactly the same.

He snarled at them. "Fuck's ass! They're having us on! These are fucking decoys!"

Haku slipped immediately out of hiding, taking in the identical looks of surprise on the two genin's faces.

"It seems so." The effeminate boy agreed. "It is a very effective technique....but just a technique." He sent needles into the jugular vein of the blonde one, who was too clumsy to dodge. Zabuza threw his sword, and it pierced through the belly of the other, leaving a gaping hole where Kubikiri Houchou had passed through.

"Dammit." The missing nin growled. "Get back to the first trail. The old man might be alive after all."

xxxxx

Naruto started in mid leap, and stopped on the next branch. His three clones had a similar reaction, looking at eachother confusedly.

"What? Why'd we stop?" Sasuke questioned, instantly alert.

The original blonde shook his head dazedly. "Damn. The decoys just got taken out."

"How can you tell? Don't you only get the memories when they dispell?" Sakura quickly added her imput.

"Well, yeah." Naruto frowned. "I've been having flashes of images of the way back whenever I thought about the decoys, but I passed it off as my imagination or something. I guess I've got some kind of mind link with the clones. But whatever, they were definitely just killed."

"How?" Sasuke questioned.

"Uh..." Naruto concentrated. "Really big ass sword. Took the head off one, and stabbed through the belly of another. The last one got some needles in its throat, in the vein. I think there were two people."

His team winced.

"I'll create another team of them, and send them back a bit. Have them be 'taking a rest'. It might hold up the enemy, at least. And I'll get to test the telepathy thing." He made the seal. "Chikage no jutsu." Four clones appeared, and promptly tranformed into copies of the team plus Tazuna. Then they headed abruptly back along the trail, even the Tazuna clone.

"Damn, but it's weird to see me all ninjalike like that." Tazuna commented.

"Hm." Naruto watched them go, until they were out of sight. He concentrated on them.

He saw rushing forest ahead of them, felt the rush of the wind in their hair...

_I wonder if I can get thoughts across?_ He wondered absently, and concentrated on the clones harder. _Uh...hey?_ No response. The images gave no indication that his thought had been heard. He sighed in frustration, and rubbed his temples. _Dammit!_

_-Boss?- _The thought came to him, sounding startled, and it didn't feel right, not like one of his own thoughts. It was more like one of his clones talking, but not aloud. He blinked, and looked around. He focused on his clones, and found that they'd stopped.

"Uhh, boss? I heard that too." A nearby clone volunteered.

"Huh. Must be something about having your fingers on your head. Or- oh right, the chakra." He recalled he'd started focusing chakra to his fingers when massaging his head, it was much more effective for relieving headaches. Something about the chakra triggered the mind link. He focused the chakra again. _Hey? Turns out I can give you my thoughts if I focus chakra to my head with my fingers._

_-Really? Cool.-_ The reply came afterwards, fascinated.

_-How come we don't have to focus our chakra?-_ Another inquired.

_Probably because I'm doing it myself. I'll stop, and you see if you can contact me just by thinking normally. If you can't, try with the focusing._

_-Kay.-_

Naruto removed his hand. He waited. Nothing happened, until a good few seconds later.

_-You're right, at least one of us has to be holding the connection. We'll report if we see anything.-_

_You do that._ Naruto signalled to the rest of the teammate-bearing clones. "C'mon, let's get moving." They set off immediately with a burst of speed, and Naruto explained his discovery to his teammates. "I can talk to my clones with my thoughts, turns out. Like walkie talkies, I guess. Handy."

Sakura blinked. "That's actually really useful." Naruto nodded, then decided he might as well dispell the dead decoys.

He did so, and got the memories. "Hey guys, I just dispelled the dead decoys, and yeah, there is two of them. A big guy wearing bandages as a mask, and he looks like he skinned a giraffe to get his clothes. He's the one with the sword. The other one's smaller, looks sorta like a girl, but they're wearing one of those hunter-nin mask things, so I can't tell. They're handy with the senbon needles, though. Got the clone on the first try."

"...So they're good, then." Sasuke concluded.

"Mmhm." Naruto confirmed. "Which is a good reason to hurry the hell up! Pick up the pace, minions!" He ordered his clones, abruptly increasing his speed and leaving the 'minions' to follow.

Naruto didn't want to admit it, but after a while he had to.

This constant pace was tiring him out.

He might have inhuman stamina, but he had limits. And he was getting near those limits. He pumped chakra into his lungs and limbs, which definitely helped. He should be fine for a good while yet.

xxxxxx

Zabuza sprang in among the little den of genin, who looked remarkably surprised at his entrance. They were apparently resting, along with the old man. He smiled triumphantly. _These are the real ones._ Then he realized something, and scowled.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!"

"They have no injuries, despite having had a confrontation with the demon brothers." Haku observed, sweeping out of nowhere.

"Yeah." Zabuza nodded, in a notoriously bad mood. "More decoys." With that, he promptly charged the decoys. But they'd had time to prepare, and were a lot harder to dispatch than the previous ones. They were slow, and were disgustingly sloppy, but undeniably strong and unpredictable. They seemed to pull moves out of their ass at a second's notice.

They were very good, for replicants. He wondered how powerful the genin creator could be, or if they were even a genin. He shrugged, and shit halfway through the neck of one. _One down._ _Three to go._ Haku stood patiently at the side. His master obviously needed to blow off some steam.

xxxxx

"Shit!" Naruto swore suddenly, stopping along with his clones to curse in a wide-eyed frenzy. "Those two have caught up to the new decoys already! That's like, over a hundred miles in only that long! They've already taken one out."

"What do we do?" Sakura asked, wide eyed and anxious.

"I create as many clones as I can to fight and delay them. Once I dispell them I might know enough about how they fight to do better. Will hopefully wear them down a bit too. The clones will give us an idea of exactly how close they are, and we run like hell. Get as far away as possible. If they get too close, I dispell all the dead decoys and we get ready to fight. Get the hell moving!"

There was a distinct difference from 'travelling' running and 'sprinting' running. The travelling type, while fast, was generally slow enough that it could be sustained for a while. Sprinting was going as fast as physically possible, and meant for shorter distances. Sprinting was what the clones did, all the while Naruto made the same handseal many times again, letting loose a miasma of chakra. He created clones as he went, and they took formation behind him, not bothering to transform. It was futile. He distinctly mused that he must have created over fifty clones in the last eight minutes, and observed his connections with the clones to see how far the enemy was getting. The clones were definitely holding them up.

He began to realize as he ran, made clones, and continued that while Chikage clones took up less chakra, maintaining a steady stream of them like this was bound to cut his chakra supplies low eventually. Either way, he didn't really have to start worrying until he'd made the high hundred mark with their numbers, but they always had chakra pills.

"Freaking hell, dobe. You really do have a lot of chakra." Sasuke commented, sounding mildly impressed at the consistent stream of chakra erupting around him. Naruto merely grunted in reply.

xxxxx

"Who the hell has this much chakra?!" Zabuza snarled, confronted with a small army of blondes rushing at him angrily. Haku had joined in, if only to quicken the progress. The decoys fell like skittles, each wave of them harder to beat. They were getting used to their fighting styles. That couldn't be allowed to happen! He roared with frustration, aware of the blood on his blade poofing into nonexistence with the decoys themselves.

xxxx

Naruto made the seal again. By now, he'd abandoned use of the words entirely, simply allowing the seals and intent to guide the jutsu. Words took too long. "We're learning their fighting pattern. It's getting easier to resist now! We have to hold up as long as possible." Four more clones dropped into position behind him.

The stream of time continued in its powerful, wide-eyed flurry, all three genin tense for the coming battle. The suspense was unbearable, the head of the rushing chakra made them dizzy...

"We're not far now!" Tazuna urged, recognizing the lake they'd just passed. "Not far at all! It's just a mile or two until the water's edge!"

"And then what?!" The clone carrying him snarled. "No fucking rowing boat is going to outrun them! We're gonna have to fight whatever happens."

Another clone growled its agreement. Naruto bit his lip, and did the jutsu again.

xxxx

"Zabuza-sama?" Haku questioned timidly, taking out another opponent. "How long do you suppose these decoys will continue before we find the source?"

"Hopefully we'll find them at the edge of the sea. If they're genin, they might not know water walking."

"Genin with so much chakra?"

"Probably a bloodline. Don't ask me."

Haku stiffened at the mention of bloodlines, and continued the onslaught through the masses.

xxxx

"Ah!" Naruto exclaimed suddenly. "We know the name of one of them. Zabuza. The smaller one called him 'sama'. Probably a subordinate."

"Zabuza?" Sasuke frowned. Then his eyes widened in recognition. "Of course! Big sword, large guy - I've read about him in the bingo book!"

"Tell us what you can." Naruto ordered.

"A-rank missing nin." Sasuke replied immediately. "Former jounin of the hidden mist. He was one of the seven swordsmen of the the mist before he tried to kill the Mizukage. It's said he killed a hundred students of his graduating class to graduate. He's been called the 'Demon of the Bloody Mist', or 'Zabuza of the Bloody Mist'."

"...A jounin. Shit. That's bad."

"A jounin..." Sakura murmured, voice thick with fear. "Oh kami..."

Naruto squinted ahead. "There's the treeline! We're at the shore." He breathed out heavily. "Time to make a stand..." He stopped just outside the trees, in the open shore. The water was dark and shrouded in mist. The exhausted clones let down the well-rested teammates, who were considerably sore from the position. They immediately began stretching, while Naruto downed a few soldier pills and chakra pills. with that, his energy and chakra took a massive boost. He flipped the poisoned, sensei-killing gauntlets out of his bag, and stared at them spitefully. _A ninja must make use of the tools he has._ He told himself firmly, and put them on.

"Bastard! You got any poison?"

Sasuke nodded cautiously.

"Dip your best weapons in it. Sakura, watch Tazuna. CHIKAGE NO JUTSU!" He roared, fueling a gargantuan amount of chakra into the attack.

Roughly thirty clones materialized, and Naruto suddenly fell to the ground, gasping for breath.

"Naruto!" Sakura rushed over. "What's wrong? Have you used too much chakra?"

The blond genin was pale, very pale. It looked like he'd turned completely white. He panted. "No, chakra's fine. Feel dizzy..." He abruptly took in a solider pill and a chakra pill, but it did little good. "Shit..." He looked around the remaining pills, then tried a blood pill. To his surpise, he perked up immediately, colour returning to his skin. "Something to do with my blood, I guess. I'll think about that later." He ate another blood pill, feeling himself return to normal. "Everyone, take some of these! You might need them. Old man, have some blood pills in cast they slip past our defences." His team accepted the pills, and watched the forest, tense. Naruto dispelled his dead clones one by one, observing the enemy as they approched. He gained more and more knowledge with every clone, but it didn't help the sick feeling he had at the moment.

"He fights with a lot of killing intent. Try not to let it scare you." Naruto informed. He'd long gotten used to this 'Zabuza's' tactics, and could now withstand the killing intent with ease, but the same didn't apply to his teammates. He concentrated, and clenched his fists. "Right. That's it. They're here." The clones took a semicircle formation around them, providing a steady wall of defence.

To their surprise, only Zabuza emerged from the trees. Not his subordinate.

"Finally..." The jounin breathed, then eyed the clone barrage with distaste. "Tch, talk about wasting chakra. You must have hardly any left."

Naruto grinned. _That's what you think._ Then he blinked, watching as a thick mist joined that above the waves.

"...A mist jutsu? Fitting." Sakura remarked, trying to hide how her voice was shaking.

"Come on, Zabuza. You've caught up to us at last." Naruto called.

"You've done your homework, hm?" The next second, a miasma of killing intent saturated the air, and only Naruto and his clones seemed unaffected. Sakura trembled and her breathing shook. Sasuke's eyes widened and he froze.

"Breathe, guys! Breathe!" Naruto snarled at them. They couldn't afford to lose their cool here. His teammates nodded shakily, doing their best to ward off the effects.

The clones charged, and Naruto was aware as those on the initial assualt died. They were clones, they didn't need to be careful. He, on the other hand, definitely did. He closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. _Ah, shit. We're screwed. What I'd give to have that bastard fox help me out for once._

Naruto looked to his teammates. "I'm going in with the clones. You should stay here for as long as possible. Either that or henge into me, but it'll be kinda obvious since we fight so differently." With that, Naruto charged into the fray.

"Good luck..." Sakura whispered, assuming a defensive position around Tazuna, who looked appropriately terrified. Beside her, Sasuke took the second option, and charged in behind his teammate, blending into the massive crowd. Sakura took Naruto's form, for deception's sake, but did not move from her guardian position. She knew how little use she was in a fight at the moment.

It was a fray of chaos and blood. Sasuke and Naruto fought with considerably less recklessness than the clones, jumping away rather than taking injuries, dodging rather than blocking. They made sure to mingle as much as possible, lest Zabuza discover where they were. All the while they were on lookout for the second enemy, hidden somewhere in the undergrowth.

Quickly, the number of clones dwindled. Naruto paused occasionally to make another, but couldn't do it too often in case he was caught. With a growl of frustration, Zabuza suddenly decided to bypass the clones altogether, and rushed for Tazuna. Sakura, quick as a flash, thre up several explosive noted kunai, forcing Zabuza to change his course mid-air.

He landed on the water, literally on its surface.

"What the hell?! How's he doing that?!" One clone yelled in shock.

"No fucking idea!" Another replied. "He must be doing something, though. Chakra towards the feet, maybe?"

"Worth a shot!" Others agreed, and shot forward once more. Meanwhile, Sakura ushered Tazuna to a more secure location, away from Zabuza but not too close to the trees. A few clones broke off to assist her in guarding, apparently the ones which had been running for miles already.

Each clone either put too much, or much too little chakra into their attempts at waterwalking. Some shot off the surface, making the water explode into droplets, and others simply sunk and lost their footing. Some remained afloat for a while, but quickly made a fatal mistake. Zabuza was obviously in his element, and was picking them off with ease. The original Naruto pulled Sasuke to the back of the remaining clones, urgently whispering a hasty plan to him, then rushed to carry out the first steps.

Sasuke quickly followed the instructions, and brandished his poisoned fuuma shuriken. The clones cleared a path in alarm as he let it fly, and Zabuza almost scornfully dodged it, stepping to the side. Then his eyes widened at a second one, and realized he'd have to jump to avoid it. So he did, easily landing again on the surface. The clones continued their assault.

Behind him, Naruto the 'fuuma shuriken' assumed his original form, and pushed a ridiculous amount of chakra to his feet just as he hit the water. He exploded upwards, just as planned, and tilted himself. He let loose another foot-blast of chakra, and rocketed towards Zabuza like a lightningbolt.

Impressively, he'd definitely taken the jounin off guard. And that was all Naruto needed to gouge a deep hole into his enemy with the poisoned gauntlets. Zaubuza sunk partially into the water, cursing and swinging round in an attempt to hit Naruto.

Naruto dodged, and escaped his gambit with his life, but sustained a minor wound to his arm, which was already closing up. He streamed back to the shore via chakra, and inspected his injury. It would be gone soon.

"That was a good move." Sasuke allowed. "Sloppy, but good."

Naruto grinned. "Thanks, bastard. I think a lot of that poison got in. It should start working soon."

Indeed, the clones didn't have to hold out for much longer. Zabuza's movements began getting sluggish, and the missing-nin realized what had happened. With a profane curse, he shoved his way onto dry ground and ran like a drunken man to the trees, pursued by clones. Some reached him, and beat him to the ground, ripping him with their own gauntlets, presumably poisoned as well.

Then it all stopped.

A figure hurtled from the undergrowth, fighting off the ones surrounding Zabuza with all the speed of a striking cobra. The person grabbed the fallen jounin, made a handseal, and disappeared.

"Shit! We were so close!" Naruto cursed. Then he brightened, realizing what had happened. "We fucking survived! We fucking nearly beat a jounin!"

As Naruto and his clones cheered, Sakura and Sasuke sagged in relief.

It was over.

For now.

xxxx

So, how was that? I'm quite pleased with it, really. I think I did okay with the fight scene. What do you think?


	3. The Means to an Ends

0.0 :jawdrop: .god. I GOT SO MANY REVIEWS. :D

Darktayle LOVES YOU ALL. 8D Please enjoy the chapter....and give me reviews. My muse eats them and is happy. :)

xxxxx

Naruto calmed down before long, somewhat sheepish at his lapse of concentration. It was all too easy to revert to his triumphant exuberance, formerly triggered for any noteworthy accomplishment. For one such as this, it was near impossible to not become so cheerful. He forced himself to sober up.

Focus. Remember your mission.

"Well, we're off the hook for now." He informed his team cheerfully. "Not dead yet, at least. I can't believe that worked. But anyway, I'll send out some clones to scout the forest. See if they can find where Zabuza and his lackey are hiding." He paused. "Maybe even Gato too. Chikage no jutsu." He made eight clones, feeling carefully for any adverse reactions. He could feel a strange rushing of his blood, and his heart pumped ridiculously fast for several moments, but he didn't feel anywhere near that horrid dizzying sensation of earlier. Apparently, it only happened when mass amounts were created at once.

Dammit. That made creating an instant army impossible.

Oh well. There was still Kage Bunshin for that, if he needed it. He frowned. Somehow, using the less developed version after creating his own seemed unsavoury.

"Right, guys, you know what to do. Each of you take one direction. North, south...all that crap. Be stealthy as possible. You're not being decoys this time." He informed them, and watched as they saluted and disappeared into the undergrowth. "Old man, how do we get across the water?"

Tazuna swallowed. "We go to the dock. A friend of mine has a boat."

They followed Tazuna there, taking in the rower who seemed highly unimpressed with them, yet slightly wary at the same time. Most of that diminished after Tazuna told him of how they'd protected him from a powerful ninja only a little while ago, and invited them into his boat.

"Very misty." Naruto remarked, looking around.

"Good for cover." Sakura recited immediately. She was the expert of the facts. Sasuke just 'hn'ed from where he sat, looking as if he were thinking hard about something.

Tazuna was reciting the details of the fight to his friend, who cast appreciative glances over to team 7 at the highlights, wondering how children had managed to do such things. Naruto looked to the sky. "Hell, it's getting late. How long will it take to get to your village?"

The rower shrugged. "An hour, give or take."

"Where can we stay?" Naruto queried. It would probably be quite dark in an hour. The barren, bleeding time of day was nearly upon them, heavens injured and ready to open. The colour was faint through the mist.

Tazuna grinned. "With my family. We've got guest rooms."

"Makes sense." Naruto grinned back, feeling a little of his distaste for the guy dissipate. "Thanks."

"Least we can do," Tazuna justified absentmindedly. "I did get you lot into this mess, after all."

The trip was silent after that.

xxxxxxx

"Well, that's it. I'm going home." The rower told them, fastening his boat to the docks. "...Good luck."

The team nodded to him gravely, and followed Tazuna off through the lingering light. They could see, even from here that the village was a mess.

"We live on the outskirts. It's safer." Tazuna explained, taking a path into the forest. It wasn't long, just ten or so minutes. There was no rush now, so no running was involved.

The house was...quaint, Naruto supposed. Certainly better than his accommodations. It was hard to say how much he was looking forward to a nice, soft bed though.

Tazuna was the one to knock, so as to not frighten anyone inside. The young woman who opened the door seemed incomparably happy to see him, and encased him in a giant hug.

Tazuna chuckled. "This is my daughter, Tsunami. Tsunami, these are the ninja I hired to protect us." Tsunami released him, then looked to the young Genin. Her expression wavered.

"Children...?"

"Technically, we were no longer children the moment we got out headbands." Naruto informed firmly. "We might just be Genin...but hell. Your old man didn't say anything about ninja, so you got rookies. Now our sensei is dead, and you'll be lucky if Konoha doesn't skin you for that."

Sasuke nodded. "He was a very notorious ninja. The only non-Uchiha to ever wield the Sharingan, he held one of the last five eyes in existence. He was famed for having copied over two thousand jutsus."

Naruto looked mildly confused at the mention of the Sharingan. He recognized the name, but didn't know anything about it. Sakura, however, looked incredulous. Her reaction only confused him more.

Tsunami flinched, and then smiled sadly. "Please come in. I was just about to start dinner." They graciously followed her into the classic home: tatami mats, cushions, and a table. "I have a son, but he's upstairs. He won't be coming down until dinner."

"Why?" Naruto inquired, puzzled.

Tsunami looked distinctly uncomfortable. "He's asleep." She lied, and all three ninja narrowed their eyes at it, but chose to let it pass.

"Hm." Naruto grunted in a manner oddly alive Sasuke's, Sakura peering at Tsunami suspiciously for a moment. "Ne, Sasuke, didn't you say you'd gotten slashed on your shoulder?"

"Hn." The Uchiha nodded cautiously.

"We should treat that." Naruto proclaimed, feeling quite pleased with himself. It was all too often that he forgot that other people didn't heal like he did, and that their injuries stayed. Like the ones on his Chikage. "Sakura, did you get hurt?"

She shook her head slowly, looking over his arm, frowning. "No, but I'm pretty sure I saw Zabuza get you on the arm. Don't we need to treat that?"

Naruto's grin wavered a little. "Eh, it's healed already. Nothing to worry about."

"Wounds don't heal that quickly, dobe. No matter how small they are." Sasuke informed him smugly.

"Well, they do on me!" Naruto shot back. "It's to do with how much chakra I have, or something, but I heal so fast it's weird. Look." He picked at the ripped material, revealing that it was dark with near-dried blood, but there was no trace of a wound beneath it.

Sakura blinked. "That's not just fast healing. That..." She concentrated, trying to remember. "It sounds like regeneration, I think, or whatever I heard about it."

Naruto snickered. "Oh, that's brilliant! Healer Sakura, team medic! I never knew you studied medicine."

Sasuke smirked slightly in amusement, but then adopted an oddly thoughtful expression.

Sakura scowled. "I don't! I just remember reading something about regeneration somewhere. A textbook? Hm..."

"It's not a bad idea." Sasuke spoke, sending his teammate's startled eyes towards him. He spoke so rarely, after all. "You have good chakra control, from what we've seen in the academy. Perhaps you should look into some beginner's medic techniques when we get back to Konoha." He shrugged.

Naruto blinked. "Hey, that would actually work really well. All ninja get hurt, no matter how strong they are. It'd be great if you knew how to patch everyone up."

"It used to be a rule to have a medic on every fully operational team." Sakura put in reluctantly, chewing over the idea. "But...healing? I don't know. I've never thought of it before."

"Well, then, think about it." Naruto shrugged. "It's just a suggestion after all. Hey, Tsunami, where can we put our things?"

The young woman jumped at being addressed, having been listening to their conversation with curiosity. She's never heard of ninja that healed before. Wasn't that kind of against the point of what ninja did? "Well," She hesitated. "I've got three spare rooms, so you can have one each. C-come with me." She showed them hurriedly to the hallway, pointing out the free rooms and then scampering away to let them decide amongst themselves. The rooms were quickly claimed, and with satisfaction Naruto began unpacking, glad to have some sort of temporary home. He'd brought a change of clothes, but all that consisted of was a spare black shirt to be worn under his jumpsuit. He didn't have any other things that still fitted him.

Naruto frowned at his jumpsuit. The sword guy had pretty much cleaved one arm off of it, and he realized the hems were about to split. He scowled deeply. He'd known it was bad quality, but at the time it had been the only thing he could get...besides, he liked orange. Orange was cool!

The blonde suddenly whacked himself on the forehead. Hell, I can't believe I forgot. I'm supposed to be being serious! Orange isn't serious. It's civilian stuff! I...might have to get rid of my orange... He mourned his decision, but decided that there really wasn't a way around it. The jumpsuit was ruined anyway.

He sighed, and inspected the stuff he'd salvaged from the missing-nins. He'd been assigned to carry the pills and scrolls (all of which had strange, basic kanji on them. It was puzzling, but his team-mates seemed to think they were valuable.), Sakura had carried the food, and Sasuke had carried the weapons. He took off his jumpsuit and changed his shirt, since his current one was sweaty and smelt horrible. It was no use sneaking up on an enemy if they could smell you coming. He wondered what to wear for a moment, before he got an idea.

He made a Chikage, and had it henge into a basic pair of short dark blue jeans. He wasn't exactly an expert on clothing, but he realized he'd missed some things out in a few places, such as buttons and pockets and stitches. He surveyed the clothing, having it make change after change until he thought it looked right. Then he put them on.

He grinned, amused by the unorthodox solution. It was strange, but it worked. He laughed inside as he got brief impressions of exactly what it felt like to be worn and how uncomfortable it was. He snickered, and made his way out of his new room, back into the lounge. Sasuke, already there, gave him an odd look.

"New clothes, dobe? When did that happen?"

Naruto huffed. "When I realized my jumpsuit was ruined."

Sasuke snorted dispassionately. "At least there's no orange now."

"There _is._" Naruto frowned, indicating the front of his shirt, dorned with an orange spiral standing out against the black. He mused sardonically that the spirat was barely off of where the actual spiral seal was.

"Pfft." Sasuke made his opinion clear.

It was then that Sakura emerged from her room, blinking at the sight of Naruto. "I didn't know you brought other clothes." She commented.

No way in hell was he going to tell her that his short jeans were actually a tranformed clone. No way in hell. "Hmph." He responded eloquently, refusing to grace her with the use of proper words.

The kunoichi inspected him. "It looks better than the jumpsuit, definitely." She congratulated. "And more useful for the job, too."

Naruto gave a mildly embarassed cough, earning him an amused look from Sasuke. He regained his equilibrium quickly, mind actually racing for once. "I think we should start training tommorow." He suggested, summing up his thoughts. "Zabuza doesn't heal like I do. He doesn't have nearly enough chakra for that to work. Technically, with that poison, he should die...but I don't think his lackey will let that happen." Naruto shrugged. "But whatever, wounds like that take a while to heal." He bit his lip. "Really, I don't know how long, since i've never had any injuries that lasted more than a couple days before, and that was only when they were really bad and there was a lot of them."

Sakura quickly went thorugh calculations, muttering. "Right...the poison..." She blinked, furrowing one eyebrow. "That....hmm. Depth and amount? Let's go with that. Do you know how deep the wound was?"

"I think I might have hit his shoulder blade." Naruto offered, feeling mildly ill at the thought of it. "So yeah, deep."

Sakura looked pleased. "Oh good. If he survives at all, I think we have at least two weeks. Maybe more."

Sasuke frowned. "That's still not much time to train, though." He pointed out.

"Then I guess we'll just have to train really hard." Naruto declared. "Ne, Sakura, you're good with book stuff. What would make us a lot stronger that we can learn on our own?"

Sakura felt quite pressurized, but at the same time pleased that she was being useful. She would try to become powerful, if only to get rid of that horrid feeling of helplessness and uselessness she'd felt in the initial fight with Zabuza. "Um," She focused. "Probably...chakra control. If we can use less chakra for things then maybe we won't have to take any chakra pills or anything. And you could probably manage a lot more clones if you could control the chakra you use for them more, Naruto. Most techniques get better when they're more focused."

Naruto nodded thoughtfully. "Right...makes sense, I suppose." His face screwed up. "I suck at chakra control. Oh well." He mused over things, frowning. "How exactly do we improve our chakra control? We -- we don't have a sensei." He stumbled a little over the words. The concept was still new to him. He'd pushed all thoughts of Kakashi and his death away, because they were dangerous to have in such times. Now...now, when the threat was gone and they could rest safely, it was difficult to keep the torrent back. The distressed look on Sakura's face told him she had much the same feelings, and even Sasuke wore a grimace.

"Well..." Sakura concentrated. "Zabuza was walking on water, right? That has something to do with chakra. We saw from you, Naruto, that if you use too much chakra you rocket into the air, and too little makes you sink. So it has to be about a balance, about _control._ I'm willing to bet that water walking is a chakra control exercise. I've never read about it before, but that might just mean it's a bit advanced." Sakura looked a bit nervous about that. Naruto beamed.

"That's great! We've got something to train on, then. Bastard, you got any ideas?"

The Uchiha blinked. "Several times when I was younger I saw my familt hanging off of walls or trees by just their feet. Perhaps that's chakra control as well."

"Tree walking!" Naruto proclaimed triumphantly. "Great! We should start trying those things tommorow. I'm looking forward to a bit of rest tonight, though." He gave a satisfied sigh.

"Me too." Sakura agreed tiredly. "I need a shower. I'll ask Tsunami-san where it is after we've had something to eat."

And so their precious few hours of peace and rest went on, full of comfort and satisfaction and the herbs on Tsunami's rice. Naruto had seen their host's son -- a small boy named Inari, who eyed them with something alike resentment or defeat. The blonde took an instant disliking to him, he just seemed to emit waves of some attitude which struck a nerve deep in his psyche.

And speaking of psyche, it was what had brough him into the house's roof, staring at the thinly veiled stars, finally allowing all the floods of emotion and thought to crash down.

He felt guilty. _So_ guilty that he'd let someone who accepted him die. It seemed that everyone close to him came to be in danger. Iruka-sensei had nearly been killed because of Mizuki and his vendetta with Naruto. Kakashi-sensei had actually _died_ because Naruto had distracted him so foolishly. The villagers weren't right about him being Kyuubi, no doubt about that, but perhaps they were on to something with the claim that he ruined everything. He sighed heavily, frustrated. It wasn't his nature to give up. Even when the endless hours tore at his heart and mind. _Especially _not now, when so many lives counted on his determination. He realized, in a way, he was the Hokage of these people, just for now. He was leading them all, trying to protect them against all odds.

_That's so ironic. Tch..._

"Dobe."

Naruto started, glancing with startled eyes over to where Sasuke was, slipped from the shadows onto the roof beside him. "Hey, bastard." He greeted half-heartedly, not bothering to ask why he was there. It didn't really matter. The Uchiha took that as acceptance, and seated himself.

After a few moments of silence, of Naruto looking to the stars, eyes glimmering in the moonlight, Sasuke spoke. "...You said we could talk once the danger was over."

Naruto snorted, not moving his head, but briefly closing his luminescent eyes against the sky. "Yeah, I suppose I did."

Sasuke adopted the same indifferent stare that Naruto did, fixing his eyes on the rising mist. As if his attention were only partly focused on the conversation. "It....irritated me when you ordered us about. You're the dobe, after all, and I'm the opposite. It made no sense that I should listen to you." The Uchiha was faintly aware of how his companion's eyes narrowed, muscles stiffened. "But there was nothing else to do. I've never been a leader before. Sakura couldn't be a leader if she tried. So at the time it was most logical to listen to you, however much I disliked it." He huffed an odd noise of disgruntled appraisal, like he couldn't decide whether to be annoyed or impressed. "But you proved yourself a leader, dobe. You kept us alive and so far, we've not failed the mission. It's not like I know how to lead people, and Kami knows how you do at all. But whatever, for however long this mission goes on and you're still alive, I'll acknowledge you as leader. Once we're back in Konoha, we'll probably get a new Jounin, and that'll change." Sasuke shrugged. "Kami help us, but there's not much else we can do."

Naruto had broken away his gaze from the endless folds of forest, and was staring at Sasuke with some kind of morbid incredulousness. He opened his mouth like a fish, then closed it without saying anything. Finally, the demon container seemed to gather his mind together and snickered weakly. "Heh, thanks bastard. I sorta expected you to challenge me to a fight for leadership or something."

"...That was my second option."

If anything, that only made Naruto laugh more. "Hah! You're not as much of a bastard as I thought." Naruto abruptly paused, seeming to quickly think over something. "Well, actually, maybe you are. Just less bastardish in one way."

Sasuke snorted. That comment was just so _Naruto_ he couldn't help it.

"Didn't you have a bloodline or something? I think I remember Iruka-sensei saying something about the Uchiha clan being one of Konoha's bloodline clans." The blond peered at him closely, and he was momentarily startled. The boy's randomness never ceased to throw him off-guard.

After a brief silence, Sasuke responded. "...Yes, I do."

"...Cool! What's it do? Can you show me? Why didn't you use it against Zabuza? What-"

Sasuke broke him off, not wanting to have to add anything more to the list of questions he had to answer. "It's called the Sharingan. It can see chakra, break Genjutsu, and copy Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, and some Genjutsu. I didn't use it because I haven't been able to activate it yet." His pronounced scowl told Naruto exactly what his opinion on the matter was.

Naruto then realized how idiotic he'd been in the last few seconds. He couldn't let himself be a stupid idiot again just because they had a bit of a break before they had to fight for their lives again! "Oh. How do you activate it, then?"

"...It's supposed to be activated when the bearer is under the stress of thinking they're going to die, or are in a life-threatening situation."

"Then why the hell hasn't it activated yet? I'd think the last few days were life-threatening enough."

Naruto posed a point, Sasuke supposed. "Maybe it was because I didn't really get much into the fight. I mainly hid with your clones and wasn't really in too much danger because of that."

"Hmm." The short genin frowned. "What about that killing-intent stuff? Doesn't that make you feel like you're about to die?"

Sasuke blinked with mild surprise. It sort of made sense. He concentrated on what his relatives had said about activating the Sharingan.

_"-like I was dead, or would be soon. Very unpleasant, but it turns out sometimes killing intent can activate our Sharingans, but you need a hell of a lot of it. More than the nastiest Jounin can give out, for sure."_

Sasuke nodded slowly. "I remember one of my relatives saying that. I don't remember exactly, but it might have been in the Kyuubi attack-" The Uchiha noticed how suddenly Naruto flinched, and frowned. "-that he activated the Sharingan. According to him, you need a LOT of killing intent, more than most Jounin can give out." He noted how oddly disturbed Naruto seemed at that, and also how oddly _enlightened_ he seemed.

"Don't you think it might be useful for us to learn killing intent?" Naruto spoke uneasily, more uncomfortably than Sasuke had ever heard. "I mean, we won't be any good at it for ages, since we're just Genin, but we have to start somewhere, right?"

Sasuke nodded absentmindedly, mostly focusing on why Naruto seemed so tetchy about the current subject. "I've already learned how to produce killing intent, though I can't manage much."

Naruto seemed both delighted and horrified at his admission. "C-could you teach me?" It was almost as if he were forcing himself to ask. Sasuke frowned, but at his attitude, rather than question.

"I suppose. All you really do is think of things that piss you off, and make your chakra...bubble, for lack of a better word. If you want to...glare killing intent at someone, or something, you'd put the bubbling chakra up to your eyes. You don't need much. The more pissed off you are the better it works. What I read about it says that the more you try it, the better you get at making yourself angry at will, but the best ninja also make it so their anger doesn't get out of their control and they manage not to go on a mad killing spree because of their anger. The more reason someone has to be angry, the more killing intent they can create." Sasuke instructed.

Naruto nodded reluctantly, and concentrated on his chakra. It felt odd to try and manipulate it to a certain nature, like the 'bubbling' that Sasuke described. His chakra felt cool, too calm to become something as tempestuous as what his goal was. Maybe if he got angry, it would make more sense.

He thought of the unjust treatment by the villagers. How they sneered at him and did all they could to make his life a living hell. How they thought him less than human, _not_ human. How some of them even hunted him, wanted him gone forever. He growled slightly to express his dark feelings of the memories, and Sasuke watched him. Naruto was evidently in the 'piss self off' stage. Naturally, after the Uchiha Massacre, it hadn't been difficult to find things to make him angry, but he wondered what Naruto was picturing.

Naruto continued, because he wasn't angry enough. The rough, tense feeling of rage was too low, too complacent at the moment. He continued thinking, because anything was better than this mild, smouldering frustration that simmered too low to properly express. He thought of the villager who'd once insulted old man Ichiraku and his daughter for being friendly to him, and the confused guilt hed felt as a result. He remembered how Mizuki, out of hate for him, had nearly killed the most precious person to him that existed. He thought of how he was alone, all alone, and no one would reach into his solitude without a sacrifice of their blood to his antagonizers. Kakashi had been killed because of him, because of those fucking Chuunin that had attacked. _Bastards!_ Now he thought of what would happen if he failed, he envisioned his teammates, pale and splattered on the ground, innards hanging out from sword wounds in their bellies. Children, innocent children like he'd never had the chance to be, sprawled across the streets in puddles of their own blood.

He was _angry_ now. Suddenly it made sense that his chakra would bubble with the fiery, poisonous heat of rage. Water boiled and bubbled and spat when heated for long enough, after all. With the thought of those massacred, helpless innocents still in mind, he focused his chakra to every pore in his body. He saturated his skin, his hair, his eyes with such anger that he'd never felt before. It seemed familiar: the slaughter, the _anger. _The rage was so familiar, like a distant memory, as natural as the air he breathed. He shifted into its path, and everything changed.

Memories assaulted him in a furious rush. They assailed him as if desperate, too wild to be supressed. They weren't his, but they were awful. He saw a strange world, where huge metal birds dropped the compact equivalent of five hundred poisonous explosive tags on a city, and the venom seeped out and destroyed the world. _His home._ A world that had ended, begun again, and had been as perfect as ever. Then they started again with their destruction, their defiance! Couldn't they see they only brought nightmares? Nightmarish, agonizing pain to everything they touched.

There were too many memories, so many, and just enough for what he wanted. It was as if whoever owned these memories was desperate to release their anger at the thought of them, but had been tortured by them for too long. These memories lent Naruto their anger, more anger than his own lifetime could possibly produce, and he accepted.

If his chakra had been bubbling before, now it was roaring, snarling, overflowing. Naruto was in a haze of mad rage where the world was tinted red, and the sight of every little thing in it only angered him more. He wanted it _gone!_ He snarled, the sound inhuman and rough, nearly a roar. It did nothing. He wanted nothing more than to release his anger, pour destruction upon what lay here, and watch it burn away. But he didn't, because that would be becoming what angered him. This hovel was pathetic, destroying it would destroy more woodland than human settlement, and that was something he could not condone.

Then Naruto snapped back into _his_ state of mind, with mild horror. he couldn't manage more, so caught was he in his storm of anger. But he realized suddenly where the anger came from, exactly who it belonged to, and felt an odd sense of dark, smouldering triumph. If it would please his prisoner, he would vent his anger, but without the destruction he so desired. He pushed out his anger, enraged and in a numb state of mind very similar to a violent blood frenzy. He was aware of Sasuke in front of him, frozen with unbelievable terror, and gave a throaty sound more like a spasmodic growl than the laughter he'd voiced it as.

He allowed the killing intent to explode around him, a black miasma of hate and fear, and screamed. it was the most human sound he'd produced since the whole episode started, but it was just as angry as ever. He screamed until his throat was raw, and he was out of breath, and only then did he drop to his knees atop the roof, exhausted, and allow the otherworldly hate to sizzle away and settle back into its dormant state of calmness. But he could feel it still, just below the surface, with its own dark message. _I'm here if you need me._ It was as if the Kyuubi was taunting him and thanking him at the same time. Naruto couldn't ever remember being so tired. He glanced wearily over to Sasuke, wondering how much of a mess he had to fix.

He was troubled by the absolute terror he displayed, and though the boy was obviously calming, he was breathing so heavily Naruto wondered if he was about to have a heart attack. "Sasuke, calm down. I'm not going to kill you. You're my teammate. Killing you would be completely stupid and would probably get me killed. I repeat: I'm not going to kill you." Sasuke looked as if the words had passed in through one ear and out through the other. With reluctance, Naruto breezed over to him, and slapped him across the face. Not hard enough to move him, just hard enough to give him a shock. Sasuke jerked violently, and finally his eyes seemed as if they were looking at something. With a frown, Naruto noted that Sasuke's irises were actually red.

He hadn't done him any lasting damage, had he?

"...Dobe," Sasuke finally choked out. "What the hell was that?"

"I-I don't know." Naruto admitted. "I was just remembering stuff that would piss me off, and..."

"Freaking hell." Sasuke muttered, and his voice shook slightly. "That's some killing intent you have, dobe. I'm not sure it would work against a seasoned Jounin like Zabuza, but it should help."

Naruto nodded shakily. "Hell...if I'd thought that would happen..." He gulped.

"What the hell did you think of anyway? It had to be something to piss you off so bad..."

The blonde flinched. "I had a bad childhood." He answered lamely, not really being able to supply much more. Then he decided to change the subject. "Ne, bastard, your eyes are red. You might want to get them looked at."

Sasuke froze, eyes flying wide. "...They're red?" he demanded. "You're sure? What do they look like?"

Puzzled, Naruto made his observations. "Instead of being black, they're blood red." He told him. "You've got these weird black things in them, like mutated commas or something, I dunno."

Sasuke swallowed, looking as if someone had presented him with the most shocking news in the universe. "Markings?" he croaked. "How many?"

"Uhm, two. In each eye." Naruto informed, confused.

Slowly, Sasuke's face curled into a wide, if slightly sadistic, smile. It was pretty much the second time he'd ever seen the bastard smile, and made Naruto wonder what the hell was so brilliant. Then he noticed the black marking things loop around like spokes of a wheel in Sasuke's eyes.

Sharingan. The Copy. _Wheel._ _**Eye. **_

_Oh._

Naruto grinned brightly. "Hehe, I activated your Sharingan, bastard!" He cheered happily, and Sasuke smile became less evil and more honest. The expression looked unfamiliar on the stoic boy's face, but it did suit him.

"Yeah, dobe. I guess the killing intent helped out." His eyebrow raised.

Naruto snickered. "We should go show Sakura. She'll have a fit." Then his eyes widened. "Oh crap, Sakura!"

"What?" Sasuke's eyes widened in alarm.

"If _you_ nearly pissed yourself scared over that, think of how bad off Sakura and everyone will be!" Naruto and Sasuke cursed at the same time, though the muttered words were considerably different, but no less appalling than the other. They sped over the roof and through the skylight they'd used to get up, rushing to the lounge.

As predicted, the immediate populace was quivering with fear in their respective locations. Tsunami at the sink, Tazuna on a wooden chair, and Sakura and Inari on cushions. Tsunami was trembling, and a wooden bowl she'd apparently been holding before had fallen to the ground, tilted sideways. Tazuna in his seat was in a state of perpetual shock, eyes darting around in terrified paranoia. Sakura was frozen, clutching a kunai with a hand shaking so much she could barely sustain her hold on it. Inari was huddled into a ball, making odd, dry whimpers. Naruto felt a lump in his throat, and guilty shame flashed in his thoughts.

Sasuke quite pointedly approached Sakura and gave her a sharp but light slap on the shoulder, and she jolted out of her trance in much the same way Sasuke had. "S-S-Sasuke-kun?" She croaked nervously, looking around uneasily. "W-what was that?"

"Just the dobe playing around with Killing Intent." Sasuke grumbled. "Turns out he's pretty good at it. No threat. Calm down."

Sheepishly, Naruto prodded Tazuna. "Oi, old man, no one's coming to kill us. Stop panicking!"

Tazuna shot him a weak glare, still too shaken to do much more. Tsunami was attempting to regain her focus, taking deep breaths to calm her nerves. Inari was faring distinctly worse, still whimpering, though he was less circular than he'd been a few minutes ago.

"N-Naruto did _that? Naruto?"_ Even winded, Sakura's voice radiated disbelief. It was understandable, certainly.

Sasuke gave a pertubed grunt. "Hn." Sakura took it as an agreement, and stared at Naruto. If _he_ could produce killer intent like that....she wouldn't risk asking about it here. Part of her admonished that, he was the _dead last_ for Kami's sake. _But then,_ Sakura reasoned. _He wouldn't be able to create a Killer Intent like that._ In minutes, her entire opinion of the loud Genin had been lost to the wind.

Now, she felt wary, and had all reason to be. Then...she noticed something. Something she really should have noticed before. She gaped at Sasuke's eyes.

"Sasuke-kun! Your Sharingan!"

She couldn't really tell, but the young Uchiha seemed quite amused. "Turns out the dobe's killer intent activated it."

And, just like that, all fear, all wariness...it all vanished behind the thrill of excitement that rushed up her spile.

Yeah, she was supposed to be being serious..._not_ doting on Sasuke-kun.

But old habits die hard, as the saying goes.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The next morning, all three Genin were not comforted by the fact they were relatively safe. Their subconscious still registered that there was a threat around, and so they sprung awake with the reactions of shinobi in wartime.

"So," Naruto announced. "We're gonna be training our asses off today. I'll leave some Chikage with the old man." He peered at Tazuna. "That's okay with you, right?"

"Y-yes!" The drunk assured immediately, remembering that despite his appearence, this blond had released that horrid miasma. It wouldn't do to anger him.

Naruto nodded happily. "Right! And you can get them to help out with your construction work. It'll make things move quicker. I'll start making some now." Naruto sat down, and made the seal repeatedly, leaving around ten seconds between every performance. Two clones gained substance each time, and moved to gather outside.

"Why not just make loads at once?" Tazuna questioned, confused.

Sakura blinked. "We saw before Zabuza attacked that creating too many of them all together gives him _bad_ blood loss. I'm not sure how he creates blood so quickly, but it must be something to do with his fast healing. Probably." Their client nodded in understanding. He'd been there, but really hadn't been able to keep his bearings in the chaos.

As soon as twenty were made, Naruto lowered his hands and grinned. "Right, they'll take you wherever you want and do what you want them to...within reason. They won't do anything stupid you ask them to do."

"Thanks." Tazuna hurriedly made his way outside to the horde of Narutos, and disappeared amongst them as they herded him through the forest.

Sasuke grunted. "What now?"

"We go find somewhere far away enough that we won't blow anyone up when we train." Naruto cheerfully proclaimed, creating another two clones. "You two stay and guard Tsunami and her brat. Report if anything weird at all happens." He turned back to his team. "Right, let's go!"

Sasuke and Sakura quickly followed their impatient 'leader' out of the door, joining him in his dance across the treetops. "How far?"

Naruto shrugged. "A mile? Should be enough."

A mile wasn't much at all to shinobi, even Genin, but it was still a quite wide range in which to train and destroy. Sasuke nodded curtly, Sakura plainly following his lead. Her previous wariness of Naruto had returned, and she frowned at his back as she ran, forming tons of theories in her head about how he could have done that.

Undercover Anbu? No way in hell.

Bloodline? Eh...probably not.

Really, really bad life? ....Maybe. Just maybe.

Suddenly, when she was deep into her thoughts, Naruto stopped, she and Sasuke soon after.

Naruto whistled, impressed. "Whoa. Big clearing."

Indeed it was. It seemed almost like one of the training grounds back in Konoha.

"...Maybe we should train here." Sasuke suggested in a monotone.

"I'll say!" Naruto agreed. "You think so, Sakura?"

She nodded thoughtfully, her theories still lingering in her mind. "So, chakra control?"

The blonde nodded solemnly, with a slight grimace. "Chakra control."

"What sort of chakra control?" Sasuke deadpanned.

Naruto blinked. "Well, uh..." He surveyed the surroundings. "No water nearby....damn. Maybe we should try that walk-on-walls thing your family did, ne bastard?"

A grunt was his reply.

"I guess so, then." Naruto decided. "Right, so it definitely has something to do with putting chakra on your feet. I guess it makes you stick, or something." He approached a tree, sat down, and placed a foot on it. He immediately focused a sort of medium amount of chakra to that foot, going on his miserable atttempts at waterwalking.

Turns out it was still too much. With a loud splintering noise, a large foot-shaped indent appeared in the surface of the tree. His leg was forced back slightly, and Naruto was fascinated by the odd fluctuations of air left in its wake.

"Ooh." He commented. "Too much. I wonder what would happen if I had someone's arm in my hand and I gave it chakra like that?" Suddenly, he shuddered. "Ouch. I'm not sure I want to know." He focused a smaller amount of chakra onto the tree, and much the same thing happened. He growled, and tried again.

...and again.

....and again...

His teammates watched him with eyebrows raised for a few minutes, then shrugged and got to it themselves.

Sasuke was definitely making more progress than Naruto, who hadn't even gotten his feet to effectively stick to the tree yet. He'd managed a few steps, so far. He looked to Sakura, to see how she was doing.

If he had not been an Uchiha, his jaw might have dropped. Sakura was more than half way up her tree. Angrily, he turned himself back to his tree with new fevour.

x

Naruto growled in frustration, a few steps up the tree. "Dammit! Why the hell can't I get this right?"

Sakura was apparently attempting to increase her reserves or something by hanging vertically off of a branch by her feet. She'd had the exercise completed hours ago. Sasuke was nearing completion....and Naruto was nowhere near. Nowhere at all.

"Remember, a thin layer." Sakura called, bored enough to lend advice to the most surprising ninja in Konoha's known history.

"I know!" Naruto snarled, the layers of chakra fluctuating from his small lapse of focus. "Argh! If only there was more time!"

"Time?" Sakura skidded down the tree, and neared his location in a few quick strides. "What do you mean?"

"I can't work on this forever! I need to get stronger, or Zabuza will kill us! We don't have the element of surprise anymore."

The pinkette was momentarily surprised by the soberity of his thoughts, and then reminded herself that this Naruto was different from the one that had existed in the past years. "Hmm....we can't exactly stop time. It would be better, I think, if we could increase how fast you learned things, that would be nearly as good. Maybe better." Naruto watched her, frustration ebbing away a little, as the gears turned in her brain. "How to make you learn things quicker...." She mused for a second, absently noting that Sasuke had momentarily abandoned his training in favour of finding out what was going on. Suddenly, she was hit by inspiration like a wet cloth to the face. "That's it! Naruto, when we were running from Zabuza, didn't you say you got their memories?"

The boy nodded, not really understanding where she was going.

Sakura voiced her thoughts aloud, guiding the less enlightened along her views. "After you dispelled enough of them, you had a good idea of his fighting style. Which means you can learn stuff from them!" Naruto's eyes lit up, finally realizing what his kunoichi teammate was talking about.

"If I make loads of clones then I'll learn faster!" He exclaimed excitedly, then dropped from his sudden high into thought.

_Stop. Think. Think things through._ It was a mantra he'd been using repeatedly lately.

Chikage or the original Kage Bunshin? Chikage would last and were more sturdy....on the other hand, they would tire, and he couldn't make nearly as many at once. Kage Bunshin he could create en masse, even if they were more difficult to actually make. They wouldn't need much chakra for chakra control. On the contrary, it would probably help. A lot. He grinned, and made a handseal that had begun to get unfamiliar. "kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" He made sure to force as much chakra as he could into it, using it more precisely from the meager chakra control he'd learned that day.

His results certainly paid off. In seconds, over a hundred clones popped into existence around him. Less than two hundred, though. He didn't bother to count them. All of them wore the same fanged foxy grin as he.

"That's....a lot of clones." Sasuke murmured from the base of his tree, quite impressed.

"Alright! Get to work!" Naruto ordered loudly, finding the absence of mental connection with these clones oddly disturbing. He'd grown used to the feeling of having the presence of many others in his mind, seeing and living through them all. It felt odd that he didn't feel it from his Kage Bunshin....like they weren't really there.

In the next hour...heck, the next _thirty minutes_, Naruto's control improved in leaps and bounds. He'd occasionally pause to dispell a round of clones, create new ones in their place, and then continue his task with considerably more ease.

Watching him progress so fast because of _her idea_, not only sparked the familiar incredulity and envy of a 'dobe' improving, but bloomed an odd feeling of warm pride within Sakura. And as she watched, as she observed, she thought.

Then she chuckled quietly in the sheer mirth of the situation.

However wary she was of him now...however much she still resented him from years of doing so...however insignificant he and his inhuman progress made her feel...she, Haruno Sakura, was gaining friendly attachment to the village pariah.

Oh the irony.

xxxxx

"But I haven't finished yet!" Naruto complained, as his teammates attempted to drive him back to Tazuna and his family. It _was_ late after all. They'd be starting to wonder where they were soon...

-_Boss?-_ As if on cue, he received the signal from one Chikage. A quick mental focus revealed it was one of the few _inside_ the house guarding, rather than outside.

_What is it?_ He questioned sharply. _No alarms?_

_-No, no. There's been jack shit of trouble all day. Boring, really. Tsunami wants to know where you lot are.-_

_Eh, I'm trying to convince the team to stay a bit longer. I've nearly finished the exercise....nearly._

_-Just create some lookouts and camp out for the night. Send the others back, they're not as happy with roughing it as we are.-_

_Pretty good idea. Now I just have to get them to go along with it._

There was a chuckle over the link. _-Good luck.-_ And he broke off.

"Naruto?" Sakura repeated, growing annoyed. The blonde turned to her, as if having woken up.

"Hm? Sorry, I was just linking with a Chikage. They want to know where we are." he hesitated. "Look, you guys go back. I'll stay out here for the night. I'll keep lookouts, and if anyone attacks I'll try to set off that killer intent for a few minutes, and you can come over once I let it up. Or I'll just flare my chakra."

Sasuke eyed his teammate suspiciously. "...Alright. I suppose that's okay. Speaking of your killer intent, I think we should experiment with that later on....and I need to train my Sharingan."

"Mmhm." Naruto nodded absently. "I'll see you guys later, then. Meet me here tomorrow." With that, Naruto abruptly hurled himself at the tree again. His two fellows looked on with exasperation.

"That dobe..." Sasuke shook his head. "Come on, Sakura." And he jumped into the dying light, shrouded by the shadows of the forest.

xxxxxx

"Wake up, boss." A blood clone whispered urgently. "You told us to wake you if anyone came by."

Naruto was up instantly, on alert at once. "Who? Where?"

"That person, over there." The clone indicated to a figure just appearing from the trees. "Our sentries spotted them a bit away and I came to wake you. We have lots of clones watching them in case they're a threat."

"Male or female?"

"...Probably a girl. Looks like a girl, and..."

"And what?"

"...Well, it...uh..._smells_ female." Naruto understood its hesitation. Ever since the Mizuki incident he'd been very touchy about fox-related details, such as his ridiculously high sense of smell. Very little of the enhanced senses passed onto Chikage, so he'd have to check for himself. He took a deep breath, eyeing the she-male warily.

"Definitely a girl. Huh. Dresses so boyish, too."

"Crossdresser." Another clone dropped from nowhere, sniggering.

"Oi, you." Naruto addressed the clone that had just spoke. "You're a second hand?"

"Yep. Heh."

"Thought so." Naruto accentuated his discovery with a punch to its gut, clearing it away instantly. "I swear, secondhands don't have brains. Must be the lack of chakra."

"Must be." The Chikage nodded sagely.

"I wonder how kunoichi survive." Naruto wondered.

The blood clone whacked him on the head. "Baka! Unknown person approaching, remember?"

"...Whoops." All replicas plus the original watched the she-male walk closer, apparently not affected at all by the clones littering the makeshift training ground.

"Hello." The person greeted politely, giving a warm smile.

Naruto eyed her cautiously. "....Hi." He replied, voice heavy with suspicion.

"I saw you sleeping here....you could catch a cold if you sleep outside at night, it gets quite cold around here."

The blonde frowned slightly, guard not dropping. "I was training. And it's not like I'm not used to sleeping outside, anyway. I never get ill." Quite true. He'd slept outside for a large portion of his early life.

"Training? For what?"

"There's some freaky missing-nin after us. We think he should be out of action for a while yet, with the amount of poison we got into his wound."

"And that's the only reason you try to get stronger? Simply to win?" The girl asked softly, seeming concerned.

Naruto sent out a probe of chakra, surrounding the unknown person, and focusing on the small details. He'd learned long ago that his chakra could give a basic idea of a person's condition and intentions.

They seemed reluctant, in an odd way. The girl was....looking for something. Information? Wanted to know something. He focused.

She wanted to know something....for personal reasons? Yes, she wasn't asking anything with malicious intentions. She didn't aim to hurt him here. He relaxed.

"I guess. I need to keep us alive, not only me and my teammates, but the village. They'll all die if we don't defeat these enemies." The girl looked stricken at this, and his chakra told him that...she was guilty? That was suspicious....right? _Oh, I don't know...._ He touched his fingers to his forehead, and transmitted to the other clones. _What do you lot think of her? Can she be trusted?_

_-Not sure.- _One replied immediately. _-I don't think she came here to hurt you. She might have something to do with Gato and Zabuza, though. Even if she does, I don't think she wants to be a part of it, if that guilt of hers is a sign.-_ The other clones inputted their agreement.

"You have no precious people, then?" The girl was sad at her words.

_....What? _"What do you mean, 'precious people'?"

"People who you love, and would do anything to protect."

Naruto was startled at her question, and thought about it. Slowly, his expression softened and a sad smile reached across his face. "I live in a village which hates me. I protect them and they repay me with their cold eyes. But I guess...I've got people to protect there, the few that like me for who _I_ am...I could have had another, but some missing-nin killed him on the way here. He sacrificed his life for us."

The girl's eyes misted slightly, and the chakra supervising her went haywire. She was guilty, and felt very, very sad. There was a strange spark of startled recognition, and a feeling of base kinship. It was confusing. "I am sorry a precious person of yours had to die. But as long as you have people to protect, you will be strong. That is true power." She smiled warmly.

Naruto sighed, feeling forlorn. He managed a smile, as he always did. "So, what are you out here for, anyway?"

The girl read his intention, _change the subject_, and respected it. "I came to pick some herbs. There are some good ones in this area."

Naruto mused on his options for a minute. No way was he going to train while a potential hostile was around, intentions be screwed. The others would be here soon, and that would probably spell trouble. The best thing to do, really, was have all his clones help her find her herbs so she could get out of his makeshift training area fast. "Me and my clones can help, if you want." He offered.

"That's very kind. Thank you." The girl smiled, and he could help the sheepish smile that transformed his face. He simply wasn't used to being thanked. "I'm sorry, I never introduced myself. My name is Haku."

Finally, he had a name! "I'm Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto." He had to squash down the 'dattebayo!' and long string of ambitious declarations. If Haku _was_ an enemy, it wouldn't do for her to know too much about him. He hoped she wasn't, though, as she had some very respectable ideals. He liked her for that.

For a while, he and his clones picked out the herbs indicated, and before long the basket that Haku had come with was full.

"You've been a great help. I need to get these back home now." Haku indicated the herbs.

"Alright, Haku-chan." He grinned. "Good luck with whatever you needed those for."

Haku smiled, then moved to exit the clearing. She paused, then turned briefly. "By the way, I'm a boy."

Naruto frowned, wondering who she thought she was kidding.

Then he realized that she thought that she _would_ be able to fool him. Not many people had his sense of smell, after all.

"No, you're not." He instantly called her bluff. Immediately, Haku stiffened. "I don't know why you're pretending, but I know you're a girl. But whatever, it doesn't matter to me." He assured her, keeping his grin.

"I...see." Haku said, voice strained. "Thank you. I must be going."

"Bye, Haku-chan!" Again, Naruto emphasized his knowledge of her gender, and watched until she was out of sight. He waited until his clones confirmed she was long gone. Then he sat up, and stepped onto a tree.

It was much harder to slowly and calmly walk up a tree than it was to run up one. But he did so now, with little difficulty. He had tree-climbing mastered.

He sat high on a branch, and waited for his teammates to arrive.

The forest seemed so quiet now that he was alone.

xxxxxx

This has to be one of the longest chapters I've ever written. And I did it for YOU, readers! :D

The ending sucked a bit, yes, but I wasn't sure how to end it. I sort of got carried away with the killer intent bit, but I assure you, it was necessary to the story line.

Please review. :)


	4. Not A Chapter

Hi guys. Sorry, not an update.

I'm sending this Author's Note to every one of my stories which I consider to be COMPLETELY active. The sad thing is that with most of my stories, I can never keep my muse on them long and eventually they can't be written anymore. I'm having a little, but not much, of this for Dramatic Irony. Requiem, while not the absolute spotlight of my muse, is going strong. Very strong. You have no idea how inspiring reviews can be.

The stories this Author's Note has been published in will not be discontinued/put on indefinite hiatus, just to clear things up. However, in a few hours I will be leaving for a trip to France to visit some friends I have there. Yes, they're French. I can't take my laptop, because I can't risk it getting broken (it's already slightly damaged at the screen). So the writing of these stories will be delayed by over a week. Terribly sorry.

To readers of Dramatic Irony: I'm feeling very guilty. Not only is this the second false-chapter in a row, but my lack of a raving lunatic muse has driven me to not work on the real chapter three at all. Well, several stories only update once a month, and some even take years to update, so mine can't be THAT bad....right? Meh. I'm very, very sorry to you all, seriously. you have no idea how ashamed I am. I hate writer's block to the deepest layer of hell, possibly lower. But yeah, Dramatic Irony's update won't be for quite a while. Sorry. By the way: something else for me to feel guilty about, I was wrong about kangwo nicking stuff. Freaking hell. I can't believe how nutzoid I went. Seriously, kangwo, sorry. Grah.

On another note, I'm working on a book. It'll probably never even get near to completion, but hell, you don't know until you try, right?

Sorry, again.

Darktayle.


	5. Alert

Upon seeing this alert after a rather long update pause and/or knowing about my other alerts, you may be worried right now for the sake of this story.

Don't be. Requiem will not be deleted. Rather, like three other of my stories, it has been marked for **Rewrite.** This, hopefully you'll find, is preferable to the fate that has befallen another eight of my stories, who have been marked for removal.

Requiem is a story I hold fondly, and has a well-developed plot in my mind. However, I wish for it to be one of my masterpieces, and have been troubled by what I saw when reading over the first few chapters. While it's some of my best work anyway, I've notices flaws, character inconsistencies, and in general things I want changed. There has also been constructive criticism by reviewers which I would like to act on. Thus, rewrite.

Because of the small amount of chapters, it shouldn't hopefully take as long as the other 'under rewrite' stories, but considering the length of those chapters, it very well might. Please consider that I have two of my most difficult years of school coming up, and the two that might be most important to my life, and it will be very difficult. I'll likely drown in the coursework and homework they set. I've heard frightening rumours about the GCSE years, from fellows and teachers alike.

As mentioned earlier, other alerts have been sent out for others of my stories. The only stories which remain unchanged are Abyss, A Question of Loyalty, and Deus Ex Machina. It should be noted that two of those are oneshots...and I have fifteen fanfictions at the current time. Bleh. Large and alarming changes including mass deletion and rewrite are what define 'clearout', after all.

With regards to constructive criticism...I would like to see more, please. Preferably before I begin rewriting. I say without embellishment that I _by far_ prefer criticism to simple words of encouragement. My story is by no means perfect and I know that very well, but without knowing what to improve, I can't grow as an author. I'm sure plenty of you would like to give me a word or two about some things, but don't want to come across as rude. I can guess this by the various forums I've found detailing comments on Requiem, few of which are as positive as those you might find on the story itself.

I stress this: I don't _care_ if your advice might be harsh. If you have a problem with my story, tell me _why._ If you find a mistake, alert me to it. If you think something could be improved, I'd be more than delighted to hear about it.

My definition of a flame is a review that insults the author, the author's family/intellect/right to exist/story, and gives absolutely no justification for doing so. Sure, they might call it a crime against grammar, but they never say why. As long as you have justification when insulting, curse away. I'll take it and be grateful.

Please, _please_ give some criticism. I keep asking, but it remains at a minimum, and I would appreciate it so much.

Thank you,

Darktayle


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